🇺🇸🗽🤯 HISTORY: 100 YEARS AGO, AMERICA TRIED, BUT ULTIMATELY FAILED, TO STAY “WHITE & PROTESTANT” WITH THE 1924 IMMIGRATION ACT — Many Were Hurt Or Died From This Bias In The Interim — Now Trump & The Nativist Right Want To Revive One Of The Worst Eras In U.S. History — Will Indifference & Ignorance From Dems & So-Called “Centrists” Let Them Get Away With Turning Back The Clock? ⏰☠️🤮 — Two Renowned Authors Offer A View Of A Biased, Deadly, & Ultimately Highly Counterproductive Past That Still Poisons Our Politics & Threatens Our Future As A Beacon Of Hope! — PLUS: Kowalski & Chase Take On The “False Scholars” 🤮 Who Disingenuously Attempt To “Glorify” Xenophobia & Racism!🤯

1924 Act — The 1924 Immigration Act vilified, dehumanized, and barred many of those immigrants who have made America great, like Italian Americans being demeaned in this cartoon. Yet, some descendants of those unfairly targeted appear oblivious to the mistakes of the past and willing to inflict the same immoral lies, harm, and suffering on today’s migrants.
IMAGE: Public Realm

Eduardo Porter writes in WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/immigration-history-race-quota-progress/

“I think that we have sufficient stock in America now for us to shut the door.”

That sounds like Donald Trump, right? Maybe on one of his campaign stops? It certainly fits the mood of the country. This year, immigration became voters’ “most important problem” in Gallup polling for the first time since Central Americans flocked to the border in 2019. More than half of Americans perceive immigrants crossing the border illegally as a “critical threat.”

Yet the sentiment expressed above is almost exactly 100 years old. It was uttered by Sen. Ellison DuRant Smith, a South Carolina Democrat, on April 9, 1924. And it helped set the stage for a historic change in U.S. immigration law, which imposed strict national quotas for newcomers that would shape the United States’ ethnic makeup for decades to come.

. . . .

The renewed backlash against immigration has little to offer the American project, though. Closing the door to new Americans would be hardly desirable, a blow to one of the nation’s greatest sources of dynamism. Raw data confirms how immigrants are adding to the nation’s economic growth, even while helping keep a lid on inflation.

Anyway, that horse left the stable. The United States is full of immigrants from, in Trump’s memorable words, “s—hole countries.” The project to set this in reverse is a fool’s errand. The 1924 Johnson-Reed immigration law might have succeeded in curtailing immigration. But the restrictions did not hold. From Presidents Johnson to Trump, efforts to circle the wagons around some ancestral White American identity failed.

We are extremely lucky it did. Contra Sen. Ellison DuRant Smith’s 100-year old prescriptions, the nation owes what greatness it has to the many different women and men it has drawn from around the world to build their futures. This requires a different conversation — one that doesn’t feature mass expulsions and concentration camps but focuses on constructing a new shared American identity that fits everyone, including the many more immigrants who will arrive from the Global South for years to come.

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

Gordon F. Sander, journalist and historian, also writes in WashPost, perhaps somewhat less optimistically, but with the same historical truth in the face of current political lies and gross misrepresentations:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2024/05/24/johnson-reed-act-immigration-quotas-trump/

. . . .

Johnson and Reed were in a triumphant mood on the eve of their bill’s enactment. “America of the melting pot will no longer be necessary,” Reed wrote in the Times. He remarked on the new law’s impact: “It will mean a more homogenous nation, more self-reliant, more independent and more closely knit by common properties and common faith.”

The law immediately had its intended effect. In 1921, more than 200,000 Italians arrived at Ellis Island. In 1925, following the bill’s enactment, barely 6,000 Italians were permitted entry.

But there were less intended consequences, too, including on U.S. foreign relations. Although Reed insisted there was nothing personal about the act’s exclusion of Japanese people, the Japanese government took strong exception, leading to an increase in tensions between the two countries. There were riots in Tokyo. The road to Pearl Harbor was laid.

During the 1930s, after the eugenics-driven Nazis seized control of Germany, the quotas established by the act helped close the door to European Jews and others fleeing fascism.

At the same time, the law also inspired a small but determined group of opponents led by Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-N.Y.), who were committed to overturning it. Celler’s half-century-long campaign finally paid off in 1965 at the Statue of Liberty when, as Celler looked on, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act, which ended national origin quotas.

But with anti-immigration sentiment on the rise and quotas once again on the table, it’s clear that a century after its enactment, the ghost of Johnson-Reed isn’t completely gone.

Gordon F. Sander is a journalist and historian based in Riga, Latvia. He is the author of “The Frank Family That Survived: A 20th Century Odyssey” and other books

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

Many thanks to my friend and immigration maven Deb Sanders for alerting me to the Sander article. I strongly urge everyone to read both pieces at the links above.

Perhaps the most poignant comment I’ve received about these articles is from American educator, expert, author, and “practical scholar” Susan Gzesh:

And because of the 1924 Act, my grandparents lost dozens of their siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews to the Holocaust in the 1940s because Eastern European Jewish immigration to the US had been cut off. They would have been capable of sponsoring more family to come to the US in the late 1920s and 30s, but there was no quota for them.

I have no words to describe my feelings about so-called experts who would praise the 1924 Act. I know that Asian Americans must feel similarly to my sentiments.

Well said, Susan!

Susan Gzesh
American scholar, educator, expert, author
PHOTO: U. Of Chicago

I’ll leave it at that, for you to ponder the next time you hear Trump, DeSantis, Abbott, and the like fear-monger about the bogus “invasion,” spout “replacement theory,” and extoll the virtues of extralegal cruelties and dehumanization inflicted upon “the other” — typically the most vulnerable who are seeking our legal protection and appealing to our senses of justice and human dignity! And, also you can consider this when the so called “mainstream media” pander to these lies by uncritically presenting them as “the other side,” thereby echoing “alternative facts!”

It’s also worth remembering this when you hear Biden, Harris, Schumer, Murphy, and other weak-kneed Dem politicos who should know better adopt Trumpist White Nationalist proposals and falsely present them as “realistic compromises” — as opposed to what they really are — tragic acts of political and moral cowardice!

Eventually, as both of the above articles point out, America largely persevered and prospered over its demons of racism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-immigrant nationalism. But, it would be wrong to view this “long arc” analysis as “zeroing out” the sins and horrors of our past.

Susan Gzesh’s relatives died, some horribly and painfully, before their time. That can’t be changed by future progress. Nor can the children they might have had or the achievements they never got to make to our nation and the world be resurrected.

As Susan mentions, the 1924 Act also reinforced long-standing racism and xenophobia against Asian Americans that led to the irreversible harm inflicted by the internment of Japanese American citizens, continuing Chinese Exclusion, and a host of state laws targeting the Asian population and making their lives miserable. Belated recognition of the wrongfulness and immorality of these reprehensible laws and actions does nothing for their past victims.

Many Irish, Italian, and other Catholics and their cherished institutions died, lost property, or were permanently displaced by widespread anti-Catholic riots brought on and fanned by the very type of biased and ignorant thinking that undergirded Johnson-Reed. They can’t be brought back to life and their property restored just by a “magic wave of the historical wand.”

U.S. citizens of Mexican-American heritage were deported and dispossessed, some from property their ancestors had owned long before there was even a United States. Apologizing to their descendants and acknowledging our mistakes as a nation won’t eliminate the injustices done them — ones that they took to their graves!

Despite the “lessons of the Holocaust,” America continues to struggle with anti-Semitism and anti-Islamic phobias and indifference to human suffering beyond our borders.

And, of course, the poisonous adverse impacts of slavery on our nation and our African-American compatriots continue to haunt and influence us despite disingenuous claims to the contrary.

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

My friends immigration experts Dan Kowalski and Hon. Jeffrey Chase also had some “choice words” for the “false scholars” who extol the fabricated “benefits” of White Nationalism and racism embodied in “laws” that contravened the very meaning of “with liberty and justice for all” — something to reflect upon this Memorial Day. See https://dankowalski.substack.com/p/true-colors.

That prompted this response from Susan:

Susan Gzesh

11 hrs ago

Thank you, Dan! In memory of my Gzesh, Wolfson, Kronenberg, and Kissilove relatives who were victims of the Holocaust – after their U.S.-based relatives failed to get visas for them.

I also recently weighed in on the horrors of the 1924 Act in a recent article by Felipe De La Hoz, published in The New Republic: https://immigrationcourtside.com/2024/05/02/🏴☠%EF%B8%8F🤯🤮-a-century-of-progress-arrested-the-1924-immigration-act-rears-its-ugly-nativist-head-again-felipe-de-la-hoz-in-the-new-repub/.

Heed the lessons of history, enshrine tolerance, honor diversity, and “improve on past performance!” We have a choice as to whether or not to repeat the mistakes of the past — to regress to a darker age or move forward to a brighter future for all! Make the right one!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-27-24

🏴‍☠️🤯🤮 A CENTURY OF PROGRESS ARRESTED: THE 1924 IMMIGRATION ACT REARS ITS UGLY NATIVIST HEAD AGAIN! — Felipe De La Hoz In The New Republic, Quoting Me Among Others!

Felipe De La Hoz Felipe is an investigative and explanatory reporter focusing on immigration in the U.S. He is a former reporter for the investigative site Documented, and has written for The Village Voice, The Daily Beast, WNYC, The New Republic, The Baffler, and other outlets. He is the co-founder of the weekly immigration policy newsletter BORDER/LINES. PHOTO: The Intercept

https://newrepublic.com/article/180494/america-broken-immigration-system-racist-origins

Felipe writes:

How a little-known, century-old law perpetuated the odious notion that certain types of immigrants degrade our nation’s character

As radical as the contemporary GOP has become in recent years, it remains generally verboten in mainstream circles to openly call for murder. At least, for all but one demographic: migrants, whom Texas Governor Greg Abbott earlier this year lamented he couldn’t order killed. At best, party officials might argue that they are disease-ridden freeloaders; at worst, that they’re a demographic ticking time bomb engineered to wipe out real, white America.

This rhetoric has often been mistaken as a new turn for American political discourse, but it’s more of a return to an earlier era, one cemented by a law signed a century ago this month by Calvin Coolidge: the Immigration Act of 1924, known as Johnson-Reed after its House and Senate sponsors.

. . . .

“Those of us that sort of thought the ’24 act was in the rearview mirror, you know, I think we’ve been proven wrong,” the former immigration judge [PWS] added.

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

Read Felipe’s complete article, containing more quotes from me, at the link.

Texas Border — Abuse of migrants has a long ugly history in Texas and elsewhere along the border. The pushers of the 1924 Immigration Act must be smiling at how their toxic ideas have continued to be accepted and promoted by 21st Century politicos.
Public Realm (1948)

Turning back the clock to the worst impulses in American history is bad stuff! It’s as if we have collectively forgotten the lessons of the World War II age and why it was necessary to defeat Nazi Germany.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-02-24

🤐 BUSTED! — EOIR SQUELCHES IJS’ UNION — Administration Moves To Silence Outspoken, Uncensored Critic Of Dysfunctional Court System! — NEWS COMES ON HEELS OF BLOCKBUSTER REPORT ON SYSTEMIC RACISM, BIAS, AND HORRIBLY FLAWED JUSTICE AT EOIR!🤯

Censorship — “AG Garland & EOIR Executives holding a strategy session.”
“CENSORSHIP” “PUBLIC SENTIMENT” “NATIONAL CENSOR” “LOCAL CENSOR” “STATE CENSOR” art by Holmet – Motion Picture Magazine (Feb-May 1916) (IA motionpicturemag111moti) (page 151 crop).jpg
Public Domain

Elliot Spagat reports for AP:

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-courts-judges-union-backlog-751f55a0ae60af5c04d6c0ca420d36ae

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A 53-year-old union of immigration judges has been ordered to get supervisor approval to speak publicly to anyone outside the Justice Department, potentially quieting a frequent critic of heavily backlogged immigration courts in an election year.

The National Association of Immigration Judges has spoken regularly at public forums, in interviews with reporters and with congressional staff, often to criticize how courts are run. It has advocated for more independence and free legal representation. The National Press Club invited its leaders to a news conference about “the pressures of the migrant crisis on the federal immigration court system.”

The Feb. 15 order requires Justice Department approval “to participate in writing engagements (e.g., articles; blogs) and speaking engagements (e.g., speeches; panel discussions; interviews).” Sheila McNulty, the chief immigration judge, referred to a 2020 decision by the Federal Labor Relations Authority to strip the union of collective bargaining power and said its earlier rights were “not valid at present.”

The order prohibits speaking to Congress, news media and professional forums without approval, said Matt Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, an umbrella organization that includes the judges’ union. He said the order contradicted President Joe Biden’s “union-friendly” position and vowed to fight it.

“It’s outrageous, it’s un-American,” said Biggs. “Why are they trying to silence these judges?”

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the above link.

Courtesy of my friend Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis, here’s the text of what is being called the “McNulty Ukase:”

From: Chief Immigration Judge, OCIJ (EOIR)
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2024 11:53 AM
To: Tsankov, Mimi (EOIR) ; Cole, Samuel B. (EOIR)
Cc: Weiss, Daniel H (EOIR) ; Luis, Lisa (EOIR) ; Young, Elizabeth L. (EOIR) ; Anderson, Jill (EOIR) <

Subject: Public Engagements and Speaking Requests

Dear Judges Cole and Tsankov:

From recent awareness of your public engagements, I understand you are of the impression that your positions in the group known as the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ) permit you to participate in writing engagements (e.g., articles; blogs) and speaking engagements (e.g., speeches; panel discussions; interviews) without supervisory approval and any Speaking Engagement Team review your supervisor believes necessary. The agency understands this is a point of contention for you, but any bargaining agreement related to that point that may have existed previously is not valid at present. Please consider this email formal notice that you are subject to the same policies as every EOIR employee. To ensure consistency of application of agency policies—and prevent confusion among our staff—please review the SET policy and work with your supervisor to ensure your compliance with it, effective immediately.

Thank you,

Sheila McNulty

Chief Immigration Judge

Executive Office for Immigration Review • Department of Justice

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

It’s perhaps no surprise. EOIR is a badly failing agency with an incredible ever-growing backlog of over 3 million cases, no plan for reducing it, antiquated procedures, a disturbing number of questionably-qualified judges (many holdovers from the Trump era), grotesque decisional inconsistencies, poor leadership, a tragic record of ignoring experts’ recommendations for improvements, and that produces a steady stream of sloppy, poorly-reasoned, or clearly erroneous decisions on the “nuts and bolts” of asylum and immigration law that are regularly “roasted” by Circuit Judges across the political spectrum.

In this context, their desire to strangle criticism from those actually trying to provide justice and due process, against the odds — the sitting Immigration Judges who see the management and systemic problems on a daily basis — is perhaps understandable, if not defensible.

At least where immigration is involved, the Biden Administration’s rhetoric and promises on being “labor friendly” and supportive of Federal workers is unfortunately reminiscent of its pledge to treat asylum seekers and immigrants fairly and humanely and to distance themselves from the racially-driven xenophobic policies of the Trump Administration.

While the NAIJ may be “gagged,” the fight about working conditions and the unrelenting dysfunction at EOIR is far from over!

Sources close to the NAIJ’s parent union, the IFPTE, tell me that the “campaign to call out this atrocity” is “just getting started.”

In statement issued yesterday, IFPTE President Matt Biggs expressed outrage and raised the possibility that the Administration could face tough Congressional questioning on the gag order, which also applies to communications with legislators and legislative staff:

“Just because a highly partisan decision by the FLRA’s board, that is likely to be reversed, limited NAIJ’s ability to collectively bargain, doesn’t mean that NAIJ and its national union IFPTE can’t meet and confer with the DOJ, provide legal services to our members, have officers serve on professional committees, speak to the media, offer training and other services a union provides,” says Biggs. “In fact, for the past four years, NAIJ, with assistance from IFPTE, has provided all of that. We give judges a voice. Judge Tsankov regularly speaks to reporters and recently testified before Congress. This is an attempt to limit what the press and public know by placing a gag over the mouths of the judges on the front lines. The only thing that has changed in the past four years is an overreach by a federal bureaucrat.”

NAIJ has repeatedly sounded the alarm on the size of the backlog, the need for translators, raised courtroom security concerns and other issues related to immigration adjudication. It has been a strong advocate for judicial independence and questioned why the immigration courts are attached to the Department of Justice, rather than being placed in an independent agency. The National Press Club recently invited both Tsankov and Cole to speak at a news conference on “the pressures of the migrant crisis on the federal immigration court system.”

“We believe that this order and un-American, anti-union act of censorship by McNulty will lead to Congressional hearings,” said Biggs. “Until this matter is resolved, the judges’ national union, IFPTE, will act as the voice for the immigration judges. McNulty may try, but the nation’s immigration judges won’t be silenced.”

As noted by Biggs, over the years, NAIJ leadership has frequently been asked to testify before Congress and meet with staff as an independent counterpoint to the “party line, everything is under control” nonsense that has become a staple of DOJ politicos and EOIR bureaucrats in administrations of both parties in dealing with the Hill as the backlog continued to explode in plain view!

Although the Biden Administration has curiously shown little hesitation in throwing asylum seekers, human rights, and advocates who were a key support group in 2020 “under the bus” in an ill-advised attempt to “out-Trump-Trump” on stupidity and inhumanity at the border, the IFPTE could be a different animal. Representing more than 80,000 government professionals, the union endorsed Biden/Harris in 2020.

With a hotly-contested, close election underway, Biden can ill-afford to alienate more key support groups, particularly among organized labor. Why the “geniuses” in the White House and the Biden/Harris Campaign think that going to war with your base is a great, “winning” strategy, is beyond me! Even Donald Trump recognizes the benefit of energizing behind him a loyal and committed (although horribly misguided) “base!”

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

Tellingly, and illustrating this issue’s cosmic importance, the Ohio Immigrant Alliance just released its blockbuster report documenting systemic racism at EOIR entitled “The System Works As Designed: Immigration Law, Courts, & Consequences” —

https://illusionofjustice.org/read/lawcourtsandconsequences

Here’s the Executive Summary:

Executive Summary

This report is based on the experiences of immigrants, lawyers, and immigration court observers, as well as external research. “The System Works as Designed” reveals how U.S. immigration laws, and the courts themselves, were planted on a foundation of white supremacy, power imbalance, and coercive control. For those reasons, they fail to protect human dignity and lives on a daily basis.

While the operations of the immigration courts have frequently been ignored, their outcomes could not be more consequential to immigrants and their loved ones. This report lifts the curtain.

Racism in Immigration Law and Policies

It is clear from the congressional record, and laws themselves, that the Chinese Exclusion Act, Undesirable Aliens Act, Immigration and Nationality Acts of 1924 and 1952, and other laws played on racial and ethnic stereotypes to limit mobility and long-term settlement of non-white immigrants.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 attempted to address some imbalances, but the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act basically broke the already contradictory set of laws, making them a landmine for immigrants attempting to seek safety or build new lives here. The REAL ID Act and other post-9/11 laws and policies tightened the vise.

Policy choices made by presidents from every modern administration have attempted to coerce, repress, and reject migration, a basic human survival act, instead of building safe paths people can use.

Death Penalty Consequences, Traffic Court Rules

The U.S. immigration courts were designed to offer the illusion of justice, while failing the people they purport to protect. Dysfunctional elements include:

A quasi-judicial structure that answers to the U.S. Attorney General in the Executive Branch and is not an independent judiciary; is blatantly influenced by ideology; and promotes quantity over quality decision making.

Power imbalances, such as the fact that the government is represented by attorneys 100% of the time, while immigrants often argue their cases without a legal guide. Detained immigrants are forced to “attend” their hearings via grainy video feed, while judges and counsel are together in courtrooms miles away. Yet immigration judges frequently deny requests for expert witnesses to appear remotely, citing challenges with communication and credibility. The deck is stacked.

4

Also, by detaining someone in jail for the duration of their civil immigration case, the government makes it harder for them to get a lawyer to help. The government is also using the psychological, financial, and physical toll of detention to try to break someone’s spirits and get them to give up.

Subjective “credibility determinations,” rife for bias and abuse. A case can be denied based on a judge’s feeling about the immigrant’s testimony, not facts. This is the barn door through which all manner of ignorance, bias, and ideology storm in.

Legal landmines make it harder for people who qualify for asylum to receive it, such as the one-year filing deadline; illogical definition of material support to terrorism; and the Biden asylum ban.

Differing standards of accuracy. Immigrants may be furnished interpreters who speak the wrong dialect. Judges and DHS attorneys may make inaccurate statements about an individual’s evidence or the political conditions of their country. The hearing transcripts can be riddled with gaps instead of key facts. Yet life-altering decisions are made based on this record, and an immigrant has little to no opportunity to object, correct, or explain.

Consider the experience of M.D. a Black Mauritanian man seeking asylum in the U.S. after the late 1980s/early 1990s genocide. An immigration judge questioned his credibility because M.D. did not provide “evidence” that he is Black and Fulani, a persecuted group in Mauritania. M.D. addressed the court, speaking in Fulani, and said, “I am the evidence. I speak Fulani and I am Black.”

The English transcript of M.D.’s hearing is riddled with “(unintelligible)” in place of the names of relatives and locations where important events, such as the murder of his father, took place. There was an interpreter in the room who could have spelled the words out to make the record more accurate and credible. Instead, the record shows big holes in place of material facts, while M.D. was accused of not providing “proof” that he is Black, deemed not credible, denied asylum.

In another case, a Black man seeking asylum was found “not credible” because his interpreter first used the word “canoe” when describing his method of escape, and later said “little boat.” But in his language and, one can argue, in common English, they are the same thing.

Situations like these, memorialized in the case record, are carried into the appeals process where rehearings typically do not take place, compounding the injustices of these mistakes.

Many of the report’s observations echo some aspects my own writings and public speeches over the years since I retired from the bench in June 2016. For example, here’s my speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW“ from from an FBA Conference in Austin, Texas in May 2019:

https://immigrationcourtside.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/FBA-Austin-Central-America-—-Intro.docx

While I was speaking during the Trump Administration, sadly, many of my observations remain equally true today, as the Biden Administration and AG Garland have quite inexcusably failed to rise to the occasion by instituting long-overdue due process and quality control reforms at EOIR. Yet, I am struck by how even then, as today, I found reasons to continue to be proud of the accomplishments of the “New Due Process Army” (“NDPA”) and to urge others to continue to believe that the “light of due process will eventually be relit” at EOIR and that history will deal harshly with the xenophobic urges and anti-asylum attitudes that too often drive policy in administrations of both parties:

Today, the Immigration Courts have become an openly hostile environment for asylum seekers and their representatives. Sadly, the Article III Courts aren’t much better, having largely “swallowed the whistle” on a system that every day blatantly mocks due process, the rule of law, and fair and unbiased treatment of asylum seekers. Many Article IIIs continue to “defer” to decisions produced not by “expert tribunals,” but by a fraudulent court system that has replaced due process with expediency and enforcement.

But, all is not lost. Even in this toxic environment, there are pockets of judges at both the administrative and Article III level who still care about their oaths of office and are continuing to grant asylum to battered women and other refugees from the Northern Triangle. Indeed, I have been told that more than 60 gender-based cases from Northern Triangle countries have been granted by Immigration Judges across the country even after Sessions’s blatant attempt to snuff out protection for battered women in Matter of A-B-. Along with dependent family members, that means hundreds of human lives of refugees saved, even in the current age.

Also significantly, by continuing to insist that asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle be treated fairly in accordance with due process and the applicable laws, we are making a record of the current legal and constitutional travesty for future generations. We are building a case for an independent Article I Immigration Court, for resisting nativist calls for further legislative restrictions on the rights of asylum seekers, and for eventually holding the modern day “Jim Crows” who have abused the rule of law and human values, at all levels of our system, accountable, before the “court of history” if nothing else!

Eventually, we will return to the evolving protection of asylum seekers in the pre-2014 era and eradicate the damage to our fundamental values and the rule of law being done by this Administration’s nativist, White Nationalist policies. That’s what the “New Due Process Army” is all about.

That brings me back to two of my “key takeaways” from the Ohio Immigrant Alliance Report.

First: “Withholding is a true limbo status, though better than being sent back to certain death.” Skillfully and aggressively using the system to save lives, in any way possible, is job one. A life saved is always a victory!

Second, as the report concludes:

Solutions exist, but they require policymakers and legislators to listen to the people with direct, personal experience. Ramata, cited earlier in this report, suggests quicker approval of cases found credible at the outset. Aliou wants judges to put more stock in migrants’ testimony, understanding that persecuting governments are not credible sources about their own abuse. Jennifer, one of the immigration lawyers we interviewed, suggested that Black immigrant organizations and the American Immigration Lawyers Association be involved in crafting a new direction, citing their extensive expertise with how the system works—and fails people.

Bill, another immigration lawyer interviewed for this report, suggests taking a page from the refugee resettlement program when it comes to verifying facts about a case. “Social workers and private investigators [could] interview people and research documents and try to … verify whether [they’re] telling the truth or not,” he said. Bill suggests employment counselors, ESL teachers, and others with specialized expertise could also assist in the processing of cases.

Most importantly, the asylum and immigration system must be reoriented toward prioritizing safety and resettlement, rather than deportation as the default outcome. The forthcoming report, “Behind Closed Doors: Black Migrants and the Hidden Injustices of US Immigration Courts,” will explore these and other solutions.

As I have observed many times, despite the “national BS” on asylum and immigration being traded by Trump and Biden, and the legislative gridlock, there are still plenty of readily available, non-legislative solutions out there that would dramatically improve due process, justice, and the life-saving capacity of the EOIR system. While no single one of them is a “silver bullet” that would solve all problems overnight, each is an important step in the right direction. Taken together, they would substantially improve the quality and quality of justice overall in our U.S. legal system and, perhaps, in the process, save our republic from demise.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-06-24

This article has been revised to include an excerpt from the IFPTE press release.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a proud retired member of the NAIJ.

☠️⚰️🤮⚠️ DEMS MUST PREPARE FOR AN UNRELENTING DOSE OF THE “BIG LIE” ABOUT “OPEN BORDERS” FROM GOP WHITE NATIONALISTS — Don’t Expect Much Help Or Honest Reporting From The So-Called “Mainstream Media!” — “Loud fantasies are expansively covered, while life-and-death stories, like those of that infant and her mother, are seldom reported and, if they are, quickly disappear,” Says The Border Chronicle! — “Roger That!”

Border Death — This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
To comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

Todd Miller
Border Correspondent
Border Chronicle
PHOTO: Coder Chron

https://open.substack.com/pub/theborderchronicle/p/the-open-border-farce?r=330z7&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

The “Open Border” Farce

In 2023, there were record contracts for private industry on the world’s deadliest land border.

TODD MILLER

NOV 9

This article is a collaboration between The Border Chronicle and TomDispatch, a great outlet which has been looking at U.S. foreign policy, the military industrial complex, the “forever wars,” climate change, and many other topics since 2001.

On September 23rd, at about 2:30 a.m., a Border Patrol surveillance camera captured two people crossing the international boundary between Mexico and the United States on the outskirts of Nogales, Arizona. A Border Patrol vehicle arrived quickly, but not before one of them had fled back into Mexico. When an armed agent stepped out, dressed in a forest-green uniform, he found a 16-year-old girl from Mexico softly crying, while holding her month-old baby swaddled in a blanket.

The agent commanded her to get in the vehicle. As they then drove to the Nogales Border Patrol station, the girl, he later reported, tried to speak to him in Spanish through the security partition that separated them. Her tiny daughter, she was telling him, was in distress. Cameras showed that the vehicle stopped for all of 10 seconds before continuing. The agent later claimed he couldn’t understand what she was saying and that he wanted to find a fluent Spanish speaker at the station. He didn’t realize, he insisted, that the infant was struggling to breathe, though the child soon died.

This hellish story of suffering at our border is but one of hundreds of similar tales of horror from 2023. They illustrate a fundamental truth about that border: it neither is, nor ever was, an “open” one in the Biden years, nor does the president faintly have an open-border policy, though prepare yourself to hear otherwise — over and over again — in Trumpublican campaign ads next year. They’ll repeat what party officials are already saying all too repetitively: that “President Biden’s radical open borders policies” have created “the worst border crisis in American history.” (While those are the exact words of House Oversight Committee chair James Comer, similar sentiments are already being offered by countless members of the GOP.)

Comer’s claim is, of course, no less predictable than the hardships migrants like that girl are suffering as they try to reach this country. While such border narratives traffic in the unreal, what is real either isn’t effectively reported or gets lost amid all the politically motivated noise. Loud fantasies are expansively covered, while life-and-death stories, like those of that infant and her mother, are seldom reported and, if they are, quickly disappear.

Barely a week before that 16 year old was desperately trying to communicate to the agent in Spanish, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) labeled the U.S.-Mexico border the world’s “deadliest migration land route.” In 2022, a record 853 remains of dead border crossers were recovered (and this is the U.S. Border Patrol’s figure, which is even higher than the IOM’s), dwarfing the record of 568 set the previous year. Such numbers, the IOM stresses, are known to be distinct undercounts, leaving all too many families pining for lost loved ones.

But those border fatalities weren’t the only record breaker. Another was confirmed just a week after medical personnel at the Nogales station rushed to treat that girl’s baby. The number of border contracts issued to private industry also set a new record. Like those deaths, such contracts soared in fiscal year 2023 to $9.96 billion, instantly stripping the previous high, also set last year, of $7.5 billion.

And mind you, those gifts to industry were made from the highest budget ever (including in the Trump years) for border and immigration enforcement: $29.8 billion. So, don’t for a second think that the U.S. has an “open” border. In fact, it’s never been more fortified or — something few even bother to mention — more profitable, if you happen to be part of the border-industrial complex.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

Maybe it’s because the victims are “only migrants, mostly people of color” and therefore not considered to be “real human beings” by some in the media; maybe it’s because getting the real story about the border requires intensive digging, intellectual expertise, and perhaps some danger; maybe it’s because editors are in search of alarmist “sky is falling” myths about the “border apocalypse” to attract readers, viewers, and “online hits;” maybe it’s because of a false belief that truth is “boring” and “doesn’t sell!”

For whatever reason, the non-Fox networks (Fox is a primary purveyor of the “Big Lie” and the “Open Borders Fantasy”) and “mainstream media” do a really poor job on border reporting.

Those with even a passing familiarity with “talking heads” are no-doubt familiar with claims from nativist GOP politicos, righty reporters, and even some Dems about the mythical a “open borders!” None of these folks have recent experience helping asylum seekers trying to exercise their legal rights under domestic laws, international treaties, and our Constitution in a border system specifically designed to “discourage and deter” them, rather than identify and promptly grant the many legally sufficient claims for protection.

By contrast, when is the last time you saw real experts — folks like Clinical Professor Steve Yale-Loehr, former Deputy UNHCR and Georgetown Law Dean Alex Aleinikoff, CGRS Director Karen Musalo, HRF Refugee Programs Director Eleanor Acer, UC Davis Law Dean Kevin Johnson, NIJC Executive Director Mary Meg McCarthy, Immigrant Defenders Executive Director Lindsay Toczylowski, Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) or any of the other huge numbers of highly articulate, well-recognized, “hands on practical experts” on human rights and asylum appear on the “talking heads” to throw some truth and real light on this important, nearly totally misunderstood and intentionally misconstrued, issue that GOP nativists have thrust to the forefront of the 2024 campaign?

Meanwhile, Dems should NOT be “running away” from the realities and essential benefits provided by robust immigration and the cruel wastefulness and immorality of Trumps’s proposed neo-Nazi “crackdown” on all forms of migration (although, disgracefully, some Dems are doing exactly that, thus playing into the hands of GOP nativists for absolutely NO return).

Here are some ideas from Simon Rosenberg at Hopium on Substack on how Dems can make immigration a centerpiece for success in 2024:

Trump Goes To War Against Immigration and Immigrants – It’s Another Big 2024 Problem For Republicans – Here at Hopium we talk about how “Abortion and Treason” will make it very hard for Republicans to win in 2024. It’s possible Trump is now adding a third item to that rancid list – mass deportation. From a new NYT article, Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps, and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans:

Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.

The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways.

Mr. Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a Covid 19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — though this time he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis.

He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.

To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.

To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized.

In a public reference to his plans, Mr. Trump told a crowd in Iowa in September: “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” The reference was to a 1954 campaign to round up and expel Mexican immigrants that was named for an ethnic slur — “Operation Wetback.”

The constellation of Mr. Trump’s 2025 plans amounts to an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of undocumented immigrants would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.

Such a scale of planned removals would raise logistical, financial and diplomatic challenges and would be vigorously challenged in court. But there is no mistaking the breadth and ambition of the shift Mr. Trump is eyeing.

Despite being inhumane and jawdroppingly cruel, this plan is now a major political problem for an already struggling Republican Party for at least three main reasons:

Raids and Mass Deportations Are Deeply Unpopular – We have decades of polling on the forced removal of the 10m+ undocumented immigrants (almost all of whom are employed and pay taxes) in the US, and it is wildly unpopular, perhaps even more so than “abortion bans.” One example – in the 2016 exit polls, in the election that gave Trump the Presidency, the American people choose “offer legal status” to “deported to home country” 70%-25%. Republicans may have a slight advantage on immigration issue right now, but mass deportation is seen as an extreme position by the American people (rightly so). It was so unpopular that the anti-immigration movement dropped mass deportation as a goal, moving to the softer “attrition through enforcement,” or “self-deportation,” political strategy more than a decade ago.

Trump’s plan is another sign of how extremism and extremists have overtaken the party of Lincoln and Reagan.

As I document here, since 2005, when the national Republican Party began adopting a far harder line on immigration (Reagan, W. Bush and McCain were all immigration reformers), the 4 battleground states of the Southwest, AZ/CO/NM/NV, have drifted away from the Republican Party, becoming far bluer. In the last 2 elections we’ve seen the best Democratic performance in that region since the 1940s and 1950s, and a reminder that Biden got within 5 points of Trump in Texas in 2020. In the heavily Mexican-American parts of the country in particular raids and mass deportations are wildly unpopular.

It Was A Plan Like This That Caused The Big Hispanic Protests Across the US in 2006 – In 2005 the Republican House of Representatives bucked their President, George W. Bush, and passed a bill that called for the rounding up and mass deportation of the 11m undocumented immigrants in the country. It was the moment when the party of the Sun Belt and the West went from pro-immigration to deeply restrictionist. Over the next year huge protests against this bill and mass deportation erupted across the US, and Republicans became so spooked that we were able to pass a “comprehensive immigration reform” bill through a Republican Senate in 2006. That bill, like the 2013 immigration reform bill we passed through the Senate, was never taken up by the Republican House and it died.

But those protests did something important politically – after years of Republican gains with Hispanics under W. Bush, Hispanics ran back into the arms of Democrats in 2006 and they have essentially stayed there ever since. In the 2006 midterms Democrats won 69% of the Hispanic vote, among our best performances in recent decades.

In the four Presidential elections leading up to 2006 Democrats averaged 47% of the vote, and in 2004 we lost AZ/CO/NM/NV. In the four Presidential elections since 2006 Democrats have averaged 51% and in 2020 we won AZ/CO/NM/NV at the Presidential level for the first time since 1940. As the Hispanic population has grown across the US and in these states, our net vote margin with Hispanic voters keeps increasing, even if we lose a few points in vote share. As I show here, in 2004 the net Hispanic vote margin for Democrats was about 700,000 votes nationally, meaning we won 700,000 more Hispanic votes nationally than Republicans. In 2020 that number was at least 4.5m net votes across the US, with this same dynamic playing out in each state with large Hispanic populations (except Florida of course).

My instinct is that whatever advantage Republicans had on immigration, and whatever small gains they had made with Hispanic voters in recent years, is now gone.

This Plan Will Wreck The American Economy – In a time of existing wide scale worker shortages, removing 10-15m workers from the American economy in a short period of time would be national economic suicide, and will be seen that way by the business community in DC and in the battleground states. It’s just totally insane and extremist policy no matter how you look at it, and I think it could become as much of a drag on the GOP brand as abortion is now.

For a party which has lost the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 elections, lost the popular vote to Democrats 51%-46% over the past 4, lost the 2018/2019/2020/2022 and 2023 elections, has deep performance issues across the country even in red states since Dobbs, embracing mass deportations seems like a colossal political error.

It is another reason why I think our goal in 2024 should be not just to win, but to really go on offense, get to 55, and make this election an historic repudiation of the worst and most dangerous political party in our history. We can do this people!

Onward/Adelante – Simon

Thank you for reading Hopium Chronicles By Simon Rosenberg. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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It’s critical to remember that migrants aren’t the ONLY target of Trump’s neo-Nazism — they might not even be the primary ones! You can guarantee that many US citizens and lawfully present non-citizens of color will be caught up in the dragnet and sent off to deportation concentration camps where due process is non-existent.

Others will simply avoid certain public places and activities for fear of being accosted. Still others will be forced underground because of fear of drawing attention to undocumented relatives or neighbors. Some U.S. citizens will fear voting, which indeed is a key part of the GOP plan to cement their “out of the mainstream” minority rule by suppressing suffrage! As those of us who adjudicated asylum claims know, many will fear reporting abuses or asserting rights to police who openly identify with their oppressors. Fear, despair, distrust, and resignation are key pillars of any authoritarian regime!

It’s attack on all people of color in America and those who might speak with an accent or dress differently from the GOP’s “White Christian Nationalist norms.”

How many of us carry around documentation proving that our parents were U.S. citizens? Notably, although occupational status is often menioned on U.S. birth certificates, citizenship status is NOT. It’s not hard to guess who will be “required” to “document” their parents’ citizenship by Trump’s internal security police!

Trump and the GOP are an existential threat to U.S. democracy, human progress, and American leadership on the world stage. Don’t let them destroy OUR country and take away YOUR rights!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-14-23

☠️🤮🤯 ‼️🆘 WARNING: TRUMP GOES “FULL HITLER” IN HATEFUL, UNHINGED VETERANS’ DAY RANT! — Why Aren’t The “Mainstream Media” & U.S. Voters Takng This Assault On Humanity, Decency & Democracy Seriously! 🤯

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/12/trump-rally-vermin-political-opponents/

By Marianne LeVine

November 12, 2023 at 5:45 p.m. ET

Former president Donald Trump denigrated his domestic opponents and critics during a Veterans Day speech Saturday, calling those on the other side of the aisle “vermin” and suggesting that they pose a greater threat to the United States than countries such as Russia, China or North Korea. That language is drawing rebuke from historians, who compared it to that of authoritarian leaders.

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Trump said toward the end of his speech, repeating his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. “They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream.”

Trump went on further to state: “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within. Because if you have a capable, competent, smart, tough leader, Russia, China, North Korea, they’re not going to want to play with us.”

The former president’s speech in Claremont, N.H., echoed his message of vengeance and grievance, as he called himself a “very proud election denier” and decried his legal entanglements, once again attacking the judge in a New York civil trial and re-upping his attacks on special counsel Jack Smith. In the speech, Trump once again portrayed himself as a victim of a political system that is out to get him and his supporters.

Yet Trump’s use of the word “vermin” both in his speech and in a Truth Social post on Saturday drew particular backlash.

“The language is the language that dictators use to instill fear,” said Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “When you dehumanize an opponent, you strip them of their constitutional rights to participate securely in a democracy because you’re saying they’re not human. That’s what dictators do.”

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University, said in an email to The Washington Post that “calling people ‘vermin’ was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanize people and encourage their followers to engage in violence.”

“Trump is also using projection: note that he mentions all kinds of authoritarians ‘communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left’ to set himself up as the deliverer of freedom,” Ben-Ghiat said. “Mussolini promised freedom to his people too and then declared dictatorship.”

. . . .

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

Doubt the comparison? Check this out:

Nazi propaganda and “vermin”

In 1942, Adolf Hitler described Jews living in Germany as an “inferior race that multiplies like vermin.”

“The Nazis dehumanized the Jews. Nazi propaganda is replete with references to Jews as vermin, rats or parasites,” according to Harriet Over, a researcher in psychology at the University of York.

“We are still creating [monsters]. We see it in … Russian attitudes toward Ukrainians, in Hindu Islamophobia, and in American racism against Black people,” psychologist David Livingstone, a professor at the University of New England in Maine, told EL PAÍS.

It wasn’t just Germany.

In 1909, a U.S. satirical magazine, Puck, published a cartoon that showed Uncle Sam as a pied piper leading a group of immigrants from Europe. The immigrants were rats. Sending them off: smiling, well-dressed White men.

. . . .

https://themoderatevoice.com/trump-channels-hate-and-hitler-in-veterans-day-speech-tells-supporters-those-others-are-vermin/

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

I appreciate that Marianne LeVine of WashPost was one of the few “mainstream journalists” with the guts to make the painfully obvious connection and comparison between Trump’s insane threats and Hitler, Mussolini, and other horrible dictators!

Even so, it was only “page 2” news in today’s Post, apparently being of far less concern to her editors than the plans of Middle Eastern countries to “upend global sports!” Harkens back to 1936, when participating in Hitler’s “Aryan Showcase Olympics” was more important to the U.S. and other Western Democracies than protesting and condemning Hitler’s ongoing persecution of Jews!

There was a time in the not too distant past when use of racist, neo-Nazi language like Trump’s would have earned an immediate forceful condemnation from politicians across the political spectrum, from the media, and would have ended a candidacy. Now, it’s “just another day at the office.” Hate, lies, racism, and threats by a powerful national politician, a former President no less, cause barely a ripple in our national political dialogue. Not even front page news! Not covered at all by most “legitimate” news outlets! Yet the threat to our nation is real! Very real!

And, in case anyone still doubts the existential threat to American democracy and civilization itself posed by Trump and his anti-American followers, his “plans” include politicization of government, economic chaos, increasing global warming, and destabilization of the U.S. and world economies. See, e.g., http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=019284ab-7357-40c1-91c7-112654eb687a.

Deranged, false claims of being a “victim,” turning vengeance into a “holy quest,” dehumanizing enemies, uber race-based nationalism, presenting personal grievances as national priorities, and complete disregard for the common good were staples of Hitler’s National Socialism as they are of Trumpism! The question remains whether the U.S. will be able to stand up for democracy, reject Trumpism, and prevent a return to the horrific time of 1939! See also, https://immigrationcourtside.com/just-say-no-to-1939-how-judges-can-save-lives-uphold-the-convention-and-maintain-integrity-in-the-age-of-overt-governmental-bias-toward-refugees-and-asylum-seekers/.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-13-23

🇺🇸🗽💡THE VIEW FROM MAINE IS CLEARER! — Dan Kolbert Of Portland “Gets” What Politicos Of Both Parties Don’t — Migration Happens, Embrace It, Don’t Fear It!😎🇺🇸

https://www.pressherald.com/2023/07/14/maine-voices-no-walls-are-high-enough-to-keep-out-people-desperate-for-a-safe-place/

Dan Kolbert in the Portland Press Herald:

MAINE VOICES Posted Yesterday at 4:00 AM

INCREASE FONT SIZE

Maine Voices: No walls are high enough to keep out people desperate for a safe place

Instead of wasting precious time trying to shut today’s refugees out, we can prepare for them in a way that could benefit all of us.

BY DAN KOLBERTSPECIAL TO THE PRESS HERALD

A young girl jumps rope inside the Portland Expo, home to several hundred asylum seekers. Much of the world’s population will be on the move, trying to survive, as sea levels and temperatures rise. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dan Kolbert has lived in Portland’s West End since 1988. He is a building contractor and an author.

In Central America, where corn was first cultivated over millennia and is still the home of many important seed bases, a drought is entering its second decade. It is possible that agriculture will soon be impossible there, along with many parts of Africa and Asia. Rising sea levels will mean many low-lying islands will disappear, and coastal cities will be forced to retreat or be swamped.

All of this means that much of the world’s population will be on the move, searching for a way to survive. Estimates top 1 billion people by mid-century. Here in Portland, we are already seeing previously unimaginable levels of immigration, with hundreds of recent arrivals sleeping in a sports arena, and housing shortages and rising rents forcing many new and established Mainers into the many homeless encampments dotting the city. And we are just getting started.

There are no walls high enough to keep out people desperate for a safe place for them and their families. So we can either spend the precious time that remains on a futile, and cruel, effort to keep people out, or we can prepare for them in a humane way that could have enormous benefits for all of us, new and old Mainers alike.

The first step is housing, and plenty of it. Multi-family housing in Maine has undergone a sea change in recent years. We can build healthy, functional housing with very low heating and cooling loads for much less than all the mediocre, drafty single-family houses we currently build. Greater Portland is home to much of the most expensive real estate in the state, but imagine if we could have planned development surrounding some other cities, like Bangor or Lewiston. Or even smaller population centers like Skowhegan, Farmington or Rumford. We are a sparsely populated state with an aging population – immigrant families could revitalize many parts of the state. In addition to the workforce we desperately need, they would bring children to boost shrinking school enrollments, new cultures and foods, and new outlooks. And of course it would be a big boost to the economies of parts of the state that haven’t always shared in the boom.

Next is finding work for people. We have already seen many immigrants going into health care, and our aging U.S.-born population will only need more services. Some Africans have taken up farming, helping revitalize that economy. In southern Maine, Central Americans are increasingly showing up in construction, where a 20-year-long labor shortage has created enormous demand. And many people show up with important professional skills, needing only some help with language and certifications to resume careers as doctors, engineers, teachers, administrators, etc. Of course we need to reform the work rules, to allow people to find employment much sooner.

It was disappointing to read of the events in Unity. Imagine using this existing, underutilized infrastructure for temporary housing! How many of these new arrivals might see central Maine as a safe, friendly place to establish their new lives?

I am a new Mainer myself, having only lived here for 35 of my 59 years, but my kids can trace their lineage in Maine and Quebec for over 300 years on their mother’s side. As the son of a refugee from the Nazis, I am perhaps more sympathetic to the plight of today’s refugees than others are, but I hope that we can see this as an opportunity to invest in our state, and to demonstrate basic humanity toward people who just want to live.

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

You can listen to the audio version at the link!

Dan definitely has the right idea! Seems like what’s needed is 1) leadership, 2) organization to match people and skills to local needs, and 3) some “seed money” to get an affordable housing program going.

Dan’s clear vision reminds me of a prescient article by author and Time Nation Editor Haley Sweetland Edwards that I featured in Courtside in Jan 2019. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/01/27/inconvenient-truth-haley-sweetland-edwards-time-tells-what-trump-miller-cotton-sessions-their-white-nationalist-gang-dont-want-you-to-know-human-migration-is-a-powerful-force-as-old/

Haley said:

The U.S., though founded by Europeans fleeing persecution, now largely reflects the will of its Chief Executive: subverting decades of asylum law and imposing a policy that separated migrant toddlers from their parents and placed children behind cyclone fencing. Trump floated the possibility of revoking birthright citizenship, characterized migrants as “stone cold criminals” and ordered 5,800 active-duty U.S. troops to reinforce the southern border. Italy refused to allow ships carrying rescued migrants to dock at its ports. Hungary passed laws to criminalize the act of helping undocumented people. Anti-immigrant leaders saw their political power grow in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Italy and Hungary, and migration continued to be a factor in the Brexit debate in the U.K.

These political reactions fail to grapple with a hard truth: in the long run, new migration is nearly always a boon to host countries. In acting as entrepreneurs and innovators, and by providing inexpensive labor, immigrants overwhelmingly repay in long-term economic contributions what they use in short-term social services, studies show. But to maximize that future good, governments must act -rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.

The unmitigated human rights and racial justice disasters of the Trump years and the troubling difficulty the Biden Administration has had getting beyond that debacle reinforce the accuracy and inevitability of what Haley and Dan are saying.

The future will belong to those nations that learn how to welcome migrants, treat them humanely, screen and accept many of them in a timely, orderly, minimally bureaucratic manner, and utilize their energy, determination, ingenuity, and life skills to build a better future for all.

The open question is whether the U.S. will be among those successful future powers. Or, will the cruel, unrealistic, racially-driven, restrictionist nativism of the GOP right drive us to continue to waste inordinate resources fruitlessly trying to deny, deter, and prevent the inevitable, thus ultimately forcing us down to second or even third tier status. TBD.

In the meantime, here’s another great article from the PPH about how Mainers have led the fight to protect individual rights and freedoms while advancing American progressive values in contravention of the authoritarian neo-fascism sweeping over some so-called “red” states.

Maine has tacked left as nation lurches right in culture wars

Embracing the state motto – ‘I lead’ – Maine lawmakers led in a different direction, safeguarding and expanding access to abortion and gender-affirming care.

Read the full article here!

https://www.pressherald.com/2023/07/09/maine-has-tacked-left-as-nation-lurches-right-in-culture-wars/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Daily+Headlines%3A++RSS%3AITEM%3ATITLE&utm_campaign=PH+Daily+Headlines+ND+-+NO+SECTIONS

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-15-23

🇺🇸 MAINE VOICES: A “Woke” America Is A Better America, Says Don Bessey Of Old Orchard Beach — Speak Out Against the Agenda Of Hate, Marginalization, & Dehumanization Being Touted By Right-Wing Politicos & Their Followers! — “These people should not be leading our wonderful country.”

Ron DeSantis Dave Grandlund PoliticalCartoons.com Republished under license Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are “campaigning” on an agenda of racism, hate, and White Supremacist grievance not seen since the late Gov. George Wallace. Yet, mainstream media has largely “normalized” that which would have been unacceptable and unthinkable only a few years ago! — Ron DeSantis
Dave Grandlund
PoliticalCartoons.com
Republished under license
Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are “campaigning” on an agenda of racism, hate, and White Supremacist grievance not seen since the late Gov. George Wallace. Yet, mainstream media has largely “normalized” that which would have been unacceptable and unthinkable only a few years ago!

https://www.pressherald.com/2023/06/10/maine-voices-woke-should-not-be-a-four-letter-word/

From the Portland Press Herald:

Maine Voices: ‘Woke’ should not be a four-letter word

Being aware of how we have treated and still treat other people in our society is so important to our society’s evolving that it should be honored, not vilified.

It is frustrating to see the continuous redefining of words and terms by the extremist conservative element in our society and government. One of these terms is “woke.” According to Merriam-Webster, the definition is “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues.” I will add in the qualification as well: “especially issues of ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For my entire life I have strived to embrace this philosophy, trying to listen to and understand other opinions, beliefs and religions, whether they agreed with mine or not, understanding that one cannot fully comprehend a point of view without appreciating the counterpoint. This certainly requires personal evolution and maturity. Being aware of the true history of our country, of how we have treated and still treat other people in our society, is so important to our society’s evolving that it should be honored, not vilified.

The term “woke” has now been unjustly transformed into a negative term. Let that sink in: Attention to important facts and issues, the truth, is something to avoid and discredit. Somehow, this makes sense to a significant number of our political leaders and fellow Americans. It appears that what is most troubling for those who would see “woke” as a vile four-letter word is the qualification above, that it applies to “issues of racial and social justice.”

One of the tag lines for objecting to this thought is that it may cause someone to feel uncomfortable or criticized by being confronted with these historical facts. Personally, I strongly desire to know the truth. I am delighted – admittedly, shocked sometimes – by learning about the history we were never taught, which was suppressed to a large extent for so many years by those who perpetrated many injustices. The historical truth has never made me feel bad about myself. In fact, it is enlightening. It expands my understanding of how and why we have come to this place in our evolution. It shows me how to be better and more empathetic, and it suggests the path forward.

I believe I do understand why this can be so threatening and discomforting to so many. I believe that the truth is like a mirror to them. They see their own racist views, their distrust of anyone they perceive as being “different” as a significant threat. I feel so sad for them, since in my life, through being open to other races, ethnicities, religions and thoughts, I have learned so much and have been blessed with a much more beautiful world, life and friends.

It is extremely troubling to see elected officials, the leaders of our political parties, and fellow Americans embracing and endorsing this philosophy of derision, division and hateful rhetoric that has its roots in the cesspool of white supremacist thought. They are leading us into the abyss of an authoritarian kakistocracy, or government by the worst of us. We must all, every rational one of us, stand and reject this thinking. We must only, and always, embrace truth, the actual facts. These people should not be leading our wonderful country.

Don Bessey is an Air Force veteran of the Vietnam War and a resident of Old Orchard Beach.

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

Well said, Don! Thanks for speaking out so forcefully!

Don’s views echo several previous postings from Courtside:

Walter Rhein: “When people say they are ‘anti-woke,’ I interrupt them and say ‘You mean ‘anti-black.’ They become enraged and act like they’re the victims (like racists always do).”https://wp.me/p8eeJm-8tJ

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

As [Villanova University President] Father [Peter M.] Donohue said at yesterday’s celebration, “‘Woke’ means social justice!” https://wp.me/p8eeJm-8vF

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-11-23

🗽DISSENTING OPINION: TRADING AWAY REFUGEE RIGHTS & DUE PROCESS FOR LONG OVERDUE DREAMER PROTECTIONS IS “NOT OK!”

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

Dec. 6, 2022

I dissent.

I was outraged when I read in this morning’s Washington Post about the horrible “Sinema/Tillis misnamed immigration compromise” (actually a “sellout”) being negotiated during the lame duck session of Congress. In short, that proposal apparently would trade long overdue protection for “Dreamers” for the rights and lives of refugees and asylum seekers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/05/congress-working-strike-last-minute-immigration-deals/

Incredibly, in the face of U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan’s findings that the intentional illegal use of Title 42 had resulted in countless clear violations of the legal rights of asylum seekers, subjecting them to a litany of horrors and abuses that he described as “dire harm,” these legislators would extend those abuses for an indefinite period! That’s notwithstanding evidence not only of the irreparable harm that Title 42 has caused, but also the rather obvious fact that once we “normalize” those abuses, they will never end.

There will always be another fabricated reason for extending the Title 42 charade. Indeed, once we start mischaracterizing abuse as “law,” we can’t even call it “abuse” and hold the abusers accountable! That’s all part of the dehumanizing or “Dred Scottification” process!

Additionally, in the place of a functioning working asylum and refugee system, the proposal would eventually substitute so called “processing centers” and “expedited procedures” to railroad asylum seekers out of the country without due process. And, it wouldn’t address the total dysfunction and denial of due process in our Immigration “Courts” by enacting another long overdue provision: the “Lofgren Article I Immigration court bill!” What a farce!

Let’s be clear about what’s happening here! The legal and human rights of refugees and asylum seekers are not “ours” to trade away for relief for another deserving group that has long been irrationally denied! “Processing centers” are a euphemism for “immigration prisons” — part of the “New American Gulag.” “Expedited processing” is a euphemism for “railroading.” Both detention and artificially expediting dockets have been proven to be ineffective and unjust, over and over. Yet, here we go again!

My outrage turned to shock and dismay when I learned that some erstwhile defenders of due process, human rights, and racial justice for asylum seekers (incredibly) thought that this type of immoral compromise was a “good idea!” Not me!

Restrictionist/nativist Dems masquerading as “moderates” are a huge problem. They play right into the GOP’s hands.

When committing crimes against humanity or giving away refugees’ rights becomes a “strategy,” “option,” or “bargaining chip,” we’re lost as a nation. And, that’s exactly where we’re heading with horrible, immoral proposals like this.

Human rights and due process are non-negotiable! And, I guarantee that extending Title 42, building additional Gulag (rather than making the existing legal asylum and refugee systems work), and railroading asylum seekers will empower smugglers and lead to further growth of our underground population.

Human migration won’t be stopped by ineffective and immoral “deterrence.” And, although many hate the idea, refugees basically “self-select” and are driven by forces beyond our immediate control.

Refugees are, by definition, folks who can’t return! So, there is no reason to believe that true refugees (of which there are many) are going to be “deterred.” They might be “incentivized” to seek refuge in particular, relatively safe, places; but, nobody seems interested in a “carrot” approach — even though the “stick approach” has failed and continues to do so!

Look at the folks who continue to die in vessels in the Mediterranean even though they are fully aware that they are unwanted and that the EU will stop at no cruelty to keep them out.

And, examine the wealth of documentation that folks forced to “remain in Mexico” — and apply under what we know to be a corrupt and inadequate system — are systematically abused and exploited.

This time, we’re not just “pushing the St. Louis out to sea.” We’re torpedoing her and watching the passengers drown. And Dems are a huge part of the problem!

Other (soon to be former) progressive Democrats might choose to “go along to get along” with heaping additional abuses on largely defenseless refugees and asylum seekers. But, not me! I dissent!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-06-22

DAN RATHER & ELLIOT KIRSHNER: TRUMP’S VERSI0N OF A “WEST WING NUDIST CAMP” — CHECK YOUR DECENCY @ THE DOOR, ENTERING AN “ETHICS FREE ZONE!” — “The naked self-interest was so rampant that Trump’s West Wing could be considered a nudist colony where decency was shed instead of clothing.” 🏴‍☠️

Clothing/Ethics Optional in MAGALAND — Ethics Prohibited Beyond This Point! “The naked self-interest was so rampant that Trump’s West Wing could be considered a nudist colony where decency was shed instead of clothing.” CREATIVE COMMONS.

They Knew. They All Knew.

Cowardice, Cynicism, Contempt, Rationalizations

Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner

6 hr ago

1,403

476

Documents seized from Donald Trump’s Florida home (credit: Department of Justice)

Sometimes we write a lot of words on Steady. Today will be an exception. Because for all that there is to say, for all that needs to be said, for all that an accounting for history requires we say, the general sentiments are quite simple:

They knew. They all knew.

It was clear to anyone who had an ounce of appreciation for what the job of the presidency entails, to anyone who respected the constitutional order of our government, to anyone who worried about the health and safety of this nation, to anyone with a moral compass, to anyone who prizes the common sense of purpose that great leaders can summon, that Donald J. Trump had no business anywhere near the presidency.

Now, as he melts down in the face of a serious criminal investigation, as we see pictures of how he stored classified material and his utter disregard for our nation’s most sensitive secrets, as we are left to wonder what he was up to and what damage was done, we should recognize that we would not be where we are today without his enablers, apologists, and hangers-on.

They heralded his outrageousness in a chorus of sycophancy.
They feted his vileness.
They viciously attacked those who pointed out the obvious, that Trump was mentally, emotionally, intellectually, morally, and constitutionally unfit for his office.

And who are they? They are the Republican politicians, the so-called serious ones who expressed their concerns in private even as they used Trump to achieve their desired tax cuts and judges. They are the members of his administration — senior and junior — who jockeyed to maximize their career benefit at the expense of doing the necessary work for the American people. They are the lawyers who twisted themselves into pretzels to try to legalize his inherent lawlessness. They are the media personalities who saw Trump as a printing press for their accrual of wealth and power. They are the capitalists who put corporate earnings ahead of the well-being of the nation.

While Trump’s voters were primed with a toxic stew of hatred, bigotry, and divisiveness, the small cabal playing the inside game didn’t bother with the MAGA hats. They were too busy trading access for favors. The naked self-interest was so rampant that Trump’s West Wing could be considered a nudist colony where decency was shed instead of clothing.

But make no mistake…

In their cowardice, they knew.
In their cynicism, they knew.
In their contempt, they knew.
In their rationalizations, they knew.
In their acquittals of his conduct, even for impeachment, they knew.

They knew when they could have stopped him — before he became president, and once he was president.

But they didn’t stop him. And with their inaction, they encouraged him.

As the Trump bubble begins to pop, all these people who knew what he was all along will likely scurry like cockroaches when the lights go on. They will make all sorts of excuses for their complicity. They will gaslight, lie, and try to rewrite history. You can already see it in many of their so-called tell-all books. Except what they are telling is only the story they want people to hear. It is not the truth.

The truth is that they don’t dare say what we all know. They knew.

Note: If you are not already a subscriber to our Steady newsletter, please consider doing so. And we always appreciate you sharing our content with others and leaving your thoughts in the comments.

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Throughout history, despots and would-be despots have surrounded themselves with motley crews of sycophants, toadies, and retainers. Trump has excelled at it!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-01-22

📖COURTSIDE HISTORY: BEYOND THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT, RACISM IS AT THE CORE OF U.S. IMMIGRATION POLICY — Professor Andrew S. Rosenberg Interviewed On New Book By Isabela Dias @ Mother Jones!

Isabela Dias
Staff Writer, Immigration & Social Issues
Mother Jones
PHOTO: Twitter

https://apple.news/AOMcfZiMFQ0OSgozcppDcjg

“Undesirable Immigrants: Why Racism Persists in International Migration”

. . . .

In the book, you dispute the assumption that the right to border control and to exclude foreigners is an inherent feature of sovereign states. Instead, you frame it as a “modern consequence of racism.” Why do you see it that way?

The nation-state is a relatively modern invention on the scale of human history. Today, we have this conventional wisdom floating around that it is the natural right and duty of nation-states as sovereign entities to be able to restrict foreigners and have these really hard borders—and that it’s that ability that makes a state what it is. Actually, if you go back in time and look at the international legal thought that emerged from the 15th through the 19th centuries on what it actually means to be a state, the commonly held assumption that people like the late Justice [Antonin] Scalia and others talk about, is actually an invention of the 19th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the great thinkers of international legal jurisprudence or of state theory either thought that states had a right or an obligation to be hospitable to foreigners and to allow them free passage into their territory or, at most, it was up for raucous debate. It was only in the 19th century, when immigrant-receiving countries like the United States began receiving a large influx of racially different outsiders like the Chinese, that this presumption that sovereign states have a right and an obligation that can be tied back to their status as sovereign states to restrict outsiders emerged.

People like Texas Governor Greg Abbott seem to invoke that supposed inherent right when they describe migrants at the border as an “invasion.”

Precisely. These types of “declarations of war” are one of the clearest examples of this ideology seeping into public debate, which leads everyday people to create this idea that migrants are undesirable outsiders who are not fit for, or are undeserving of reaping the benefits of living in the United States or participating in our society.

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Read the complete interview at the link.

The myth of the “undesirable immigrant” — at the heart of the anti-immigrant rabble rousing of Trump, Miller, Bannon, DeSantis, Abbott, Cotton, Hawley, etc. — has deep roots in American racial history.

I’ve said it many times: There will be neither racial justice nor equal justice for all without justice for immigrants (regardless of status). Laws like the Refugee Act of 1980, that very explicitly make arrival status irrelevant to access to a fair legal process, have been intentionally misinterpreted and misapplied by right-wing judges from the Supremes all the way down to the Immigration Courts.

Advocates for civil rights, womens’ rights, LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights, disability rights, and other fundamental rights that have been unlawfully restricted or diminished, usually, but certainly not exclusively, by the right, who continue to ignore the primacy of dealing with the intentional unfair, racially biased treatment of migrants do so at their own peril!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-12-22

🤮WHITE REPLACEMENT THEORY (“WRT”) IS SIMPLY FASCISM “REBRANDED!” — “In terms of propaganda, it is a rebranding of the same thing, namely longstanding fascist paranoias and lies about invasion and racial and political replacement.”

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=34dc9d2d-a5e6-4795-a504-e742e1148d06

Jason Stanley and Fredrico Finchelstein write in the LA Times:

. . . .

Democracy is essentially a system based around two values — freedom and equality. Fascists promoted the idea of replacement as a way of arguing that democracy and its ideals were incompatible with the nation. The very first chapter of Grant’s book is “Race and Democracy,” in which he contends that democracy is a threat to Nordic supremacy, because democracy leads inevitably to greater immigration and equality between races.

In fascist ideology, true national consciousness is pitted against domestic “enemies,” who are against national forms that are racially, ethnically or religiously homogeneous. These domestic “enemies” are invariably institutions and individuals who champion democracy and its ideals.

The Indian nationalist ideologue M.S. Golwalkar, the ideological founding father of BJP, the right-wing Hindu party of Narendra Modi, argued against the idea that a nation was composed of all of its inhabitants and rejected the idea that every citizen of India had equal rights to freedom. Like Grant, Golwalkar regarded democratic ideals as a clear threat to his vision of the nation.

If enemies are people who either look, think or behave differently, and if their mere existence poses a threat to the imagined homogeneity of the nation, it is not surprising that the most radicalized believer would carry out mass murders, as has happened in the U.S., Europe and New Zealand, and pogroms as in India.

And, of course, we see it in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ideas of replacement are central to Russian extremist, nationalist, antisemitic and fascist traditions. They motivate the nature of its attack in Ukraine, such as wiping out Ukrainian identity culturally and physically. Vladimir Putin also considers liberal democracy as an existential threat to Russian cultural greatness, and by extension, to the Russian nation.

The link between WRT and fascism is not accidental. WRT is a relatively recent label for old fascism. In terms of propaganda, it is a rebranding of the same thing, namely longstanding fascist paranoias and lies about invasion and racial and political replacement. WRT’s logic justifies mass violence. When it is normalized, it poses an existential threat to democracy and its ideals. It targets the very idea of common humanity that underlies them.

Jason Stanley is a professor of philosophy at Yale University. His most recent book is “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.”Federico Finchelstein is a professor of history at the New School. He is the author of the forthcoming book “Fascist Mythologies.”

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

Read the complete article at the link.

“Targeting the idea of common humanity” is central to today’s far-right political activism — from legislatures to the courts.

As I have frequently pointed out, anti-immigrant myths and fear mongering are the “heart and soul” of modern White Nationalist fascism.

Trump’s degrading of migrants from Haiti and Africa and his wish for more Norwegian immigrants is a classic example of the “myth of Nordic supremacy” that is a staple of some fascist movements. See, e.g., https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-referred-haiti-african-countries-shithole-nations-n836946.

That’s why Dems failure to take strong pro-immigrants’-rights actions and to aggressively undue the nativist anti-immigrant agenda of the Trump regime is so problematic and short-sighted!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-26-22

🤯JUXTAPOSITION OF THE WEEK: INCOMPETENCE OF USG IMMIGRATION BUREAUCRACY HARMFUL TO PRACTITIONERS’ HEALTH!☠️🤮

These items were posted together this week on LexsNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/outsidenews/posts/uscis-contact-center-is-more-a-source-of-frustration-than-assistance

USCIS Contact Center is More a Source of Frustration than Assistance

Cyrus D. Mehta, Kaitlyn Box, and Jessica Paszko, Mar. 15, 2022

“The USCIS Contact Center purports to provide tools for checking case statuses online, correcting notices that contain mistakes or were never delivered, and connecting applicants to a representative for live support. However, the Contact Center is more often a source of frustration than assistance. We outline some of our firm’s experiences with the Contact Center, and provide suggestions for improving its services.

One common set of issues occurs when an attorney attempts to place a call or e-request on behalf of a client. USCIS refuses to speak with even the managing attorney of the firm if a different attorney has submitted a Form G-28. Difficulties arise when the attorney of record has departed the firm or is otherwise unavailable, and other attorneys are then unable to utilize the Contact Center to assist a client. Even when the alternate attorney on the case submits a Form G-28, the Contact Center often is unable to track the submission of a new Form G-28 and refuses to speak with the alternate attorney. In some instances, USCIS will speak with an alternate attorney if the client is also on the call. This arrangement, however, defeats the purpose of a Form G-28 by forcing the client verbally give permission for representation over the phone, and is highly inconvenient when an attorney cannot be physically in the room with a client or arrange a conference call.

Additionally, USCIS only allows certain interested parties to a case to utilize the Contact Center to make queries. Only the petitioner or an attorney/accredited representative can submit e-requests in connection with a Form I-129 or I-140 petition, for example. USCIS will not respond to requests placed by the beneficiary of such petitions, although the beneficiary may be more sensitive to delayed receipt notices or misspelling on approval notices, and in a better position to raise these issues to USCIS than the employer.

Further, the USCIS Contact Center is not always responsive to requests, even when they are placed by a recognized party. Our office has observed instances of receipt notices that contain errors failing to get corrected, even after multiples calls and e-requests from the attorney of record. When USCIS does not timely rectify errors of this kind and issues an approval notice still containing a misspelling, applicants are forced to file a Form I-824 and pay the considerable $465 filing fee to seek a correction. The processing time for an I-824 ranges from a few months to upwards of 24 months.

Delays in processing applications have become endemic. Applicants do not get an employment authorization document issued in time and can lose their job. Also, obtaining advance parole to travel takes several months. One can use the USCIS Contact Center to make an expedite request under its articulated criteria. Unfortunately, most expedited requests get denied even though they fit the criteria

The problems with the USCIS Contact Center have widely been observed. On February 28, 2022, 47 members of Congress wrote a letter to DHS urging it to make improvements to the Contact Center. See AILA, Forty-Seven Members of Congress Urge DHS to Make Improvements to USCIS Contact Center, AILA Doc. No. 22030300 (Feb. 28, 2022), https://www.aila.org/infonet/urging-dhs-to-make-improvements-to-uscis-contact. Among the improvements suggested by the members of Congress were providing accurate and accommodating callback windows for customers submitting requests through InfoMod, allowing law firm staff other than the attorney of record to make requests through the Contact Center, making the criteria used to grant appointments through InfoMod public, and offering walk-in availability for emergency requests at local USCIS offices.

Notwithstanding its shortcomings, the USCIS Contact Center has facilitated positive outcomes for some individuals. The USCIS 800 number has been helpful in getting corrected notices sent to applicants, or in this firm’s experience, ensuring that beneficiaries to an approved I-140 receive copies of Notices of Intent to Revoke under Matter of V-S-G- Inc., Adopted Decision 2017-06 (AAO Nov. 11, 2017).”

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https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/outsidenews/posts/the-lifeguard-is-drowning-identifying-and-combating-burnout-and-secondary-trauma-in-asylum-practitioners-free-aba-webinar

The Lifeguard is Drowning: Identifying and Combating Burnout and Secondary Trauma in Asylum Practitioners (Free ABA Webinar)

The Lifeguard is Drowning: Identifying and Combating Burnout and Secondary Trauma in Asylum Practitioners

Register here.

Asylum attorneys have been facing a longstanding mental health crisis. The pandemic, sweeping regulatory changes, and uncertainty created deeper dimensions of stress in an already chaotic immigration system. To address this crisis, in 2020, Professors Lindsay Harris and Hillary Mellinger surveyed over 700 immigration attorneys utilizing the National Asylum Attorney Burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress Survey. Their groundbreaking study found that asylum attorneys displayed symptoms of burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) at rates higher than immigration judges, social workers, hospital doctors, nurses, and prison wardens. Asylum attorneys reported burnout symptoms including not only depression, but boredom, cynicism, discouragement, and a loss of compassion. Notably, STS symptoms mirror Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder which include intrusive thoughts, traumatic nightmares, insomnia, chronic irritability, fatigue, trouble concentrating, and hypervigilance.

The ABA has a longstanding commitment to address and identify resources to ameliorate attorney well-being and mental health. While strides have been made, this panel seeks to build upon the study to facilitate a normative shift away from old mental health paradigms to a culture of openly discussing burnout and secondary trauma within law school settings, non-profits, government agencies, and law firms.

This webinar, moderated by Deena Sharuk, Senior Legal Advisor to the ABA Commission on Immigration (COI), along with experts Law Professor Lindsay Harris, Criminal Justice and Criminology Professor Hillary Mellinger, ABA COI Senior Staff Attorney Eloy Gardea, and Leora Hudak from Center for Victims of Torture will discuss the implications of the survey’s findings on lawyers, their clients, and the immigration system. The panelists will discuss concrete ways to shift the norms in the legal profession on an individual and institutional level for attorneys to build sustainable careers in this field.

Time: Apr 7, 2022 03:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)

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Of course, USCIS isn’t the only part of the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy taking a toll on the heath of practitioners and their clients.

Over at EOIR, poor leadership, overly bureaucratized management, “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” mindless enforcement “gimmicks,” a “Miller Lite” BIA, poor judicial selections by the Trump regime unaddressed by Garland, anti-immigrant/anti-asylum seeker “culture,” disdain for due process, disregard for best practices, endless largely self-generated backlogs, and lack of transparency continue to plague the system and torment advocates.

Unlike DOJ and EOIR, the ABA Panel conducting this webinar is made up of true subject matter experts and all-star practical scholars.

Deena Sharuk
Senior Advisor
ABA Commission on Immigration

Dr. Hillary Mellinger
Assistant Professor
Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology
Washington State University
PHOTO: WSU

Eloy Gardea
Senior Staff Attorney
ABA Commission on Immigration
PHOTO: Facebook

Leora Hudak
Program Manager
Center for Victims of
Torture
PHOTO: Linkedin

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-19-22

🏴‍☠️NO ACCOUNTABILITY: ONE YEAR AFTER PUBLICLY INSTIGATING A FAILED COUP, TRUMP CONTINUES TO OPENLY PLOT TO OVERTHROW DEMOCRACY, AS NEO-FASCIST GOP & ITS TOADY POLITICOS LINE UP BEHIND THE “BIG LIE!” — THE GOP, & THOSE WHO SUPPORT & ENABLE IT, HAS ACTUALLY BECOME THE BIGGEST THREAT TO THE FUTURE OF OUR REPUBLIC!🤮👎🏽🏴‍☠️

S.V. Date
Senior White House Correspondent
HuffPost
PHOTO: HuffPost

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coup-attempt_n_61c2733fe4b04b42ab6602a2

SV Date on HuffPost:

WASHINGTON — What if you attempted a coup but people were unwilling to wrap their heads around what you had done?

A year after Jan. 6, 2021, that is the peculiar situation in which Donald Trump finds himself. Instead of being carted off in handcuffs for inciting an insurrection against the United States, or even just being banished from federal office for life by the Senate, the former president instead remains the leader of one of the two major political parties and is openly considering another run for the White House in 2024.

. . . .

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/05/capitol-attack-january-6-democracy-america-trump?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Cas Mudde on The Guardian:

The government is finally taking the threat of far-right militia groups seriously. But the larger threat are the Republican legislators who continue to recklessly undermine democracy

One year ago, he was frantically barricading the doors to the House gallery to keep out the violent mob. Today, he calls the insurrection a “bold-faced lie” and likens the event to “a normal tourist visit”. The story of Andrew Clyde, who represents part of my – heavily gerrymandered – liberal college town in the House of Representatives, is the story of the Republican party in 2021. It shows a party that had the opportunity to break with the anti-democratic course under Donald Trump, but was too weak in ideology and leadership to do so, thereby presenting a fundamental threat to US democracy in 2022 and beyond.

The risk of a coup in the next US election is greater now than it ever was under Trump | Laurence H Tribe

Clyde is illustrative of another ongoing development, the slow but steady takeover of the Republican party by new, and often relatively young, Trump supporters. In 2015, when his massive gun store on the outskirts of town was still flying the old flag of Georgia, which includes the Confederate flag, he was a lone, open supporter of then-presidential candidate Trump, with several large pro-Trump and anti-“fake news” signs adorning his gun store. Five years later, Clyde was elected to the House of Representatives as part of a wave of Trump-supporting novices, mostly replacing Republicans who had supported President Trump more strategically than ideologically.

With his 180-degree turn about the 6 January insurrection, Clyde is back in line with the majority of the Republican base, as a recent UMass poll shows. After initial shock, and broad condemnation, Republicans have embraced the people who stormed the Capitol last year, primarily referring to the event as a “protest” (80%) and to the insurrectionists as “protesters” (62%), while blaming the Democratic party (30%), the Capitol police (23%), and the inevitable antifa (20%) for what happened. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of Republicans (75%) believe the country should “move on” from 6 January, rather than learn from it. And although most don’t care either way, one-third of Republicans say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who refuses to denounce the insurrection.

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The increased anti-democratic threat of the Republican party can also be seen in the tidal wave of voting restrictions proposed and passed in 2021. The Brennan Center for Justice counted a stunning 440 bills “with provisions that restrict voting access” introduced across all but one of the 50 US states, the highest number since the Center started tracking them 10 years ago. A total of 34 such laws were passed in 19 different states last year, and 88 bills in nine states are being carried over to the 2022 legislative term. Worryingly, Trump-backed Republicans who claim the 2020 election was stolen are running for secretary of state in various places where Trump unsuccessfully challenged the results.

. . . .

At the same time, the Republican party has become increasingly united and naked in its extremism, which denies both the anti-democratic character of the 6 January attack and the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency, and is passing an unprecedented number of voter restriction bills in preparation for the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential elections. As long as the White House mainly focuses on fighting “domestic violent extremism”, and largely ignores or minimizes the much more lethal threat to US democracy posed by non-violent extremists, the US will continue to move closer and closer to an authoritarian future.

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You can read both articles in full at the above links.

If you are counting on AG Merrick Garland to “lead the charge” on establishing accountability, your optimism might be tempered by his own failure to “clean house” at DOJ and in particular by his failure to reform his wholly-owned Immigration Court system that was front and center in assisting and carrying out the Trump/Miller White Nationalist assault on the rule of law, primarily targeting individuals of color and the “world’s most vulnerable” seeking justice in our system.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-06-22

🌎ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES ARE ENTITLED TO PROTECTION — BIDEN ADMINISTRATION RECOGNIZES PROBLEM, BUT FAILS TO ACT ACCORDINGLY — Bannon & Far Right Neo Fascists 🏴‍☠️ Plan To Leverage Lies, Hate, Fear, & Loathing To Destroy Civilization! ☹️ — Round Table’s 🛡⚔️ Jeffrey Chase & The Guardian’s 🖋 Zoe Williams Sound The Alarm!⏰

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2021/11/22/white-house-issues-report-on-climate-change-and-migration\

JEFFREY S. CHASE | OPINIONS/ANALYSIS ON IMMIGRATION LAW

BLOG

ARCHIVE

PRESS AND INTERVIEWS

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White House Issues Report on Climate Change and Migration

On October 21, the White House issued a Report on the Impact of Climate Change on Migration which contains a few noteworthy passages relating to the law of asylum.

On page 17, the White House report acknowledges that existing legal instruments for addressing displacement caused by climate change are limited. Encouragingly, the report advises that “the United States should endeavor to maximize their application, as appropriate” to such displaced individuals.

The report next cites both the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol and their application to climate-induced displacement, referencing recent UNHCR guidance on the topic. The report then offers three examples in which climate change issues might arise in the asylum context.

First, the report recognizes that where “a government withholds or denies relief from the impacts of climate change to specific individuals who share a protected characteristic in a manner and to a degree amounting to persecution, such individuals may be eligible for refugee status.”

Secondly, the report acknowledges that “adverse impacts of climate change may affect whether an individual has a viable relocation alternative within their country or territory.” This language relates to the regulatory requirement that in order to have a well-founded fear of persecution, an asylum applicant could not avoid persecution by relocating within their country of nationality “if under all the circumstances it would be reasonable to expect the applicant to do so.”1

The applicable regulations instruct that:

adjudicators should consider, but are not limited to considering, whether the applicant would face other serious harm in the place of suggested relocation; any ongoing civil strife within the country; administrative, economic, or judicial infrastructure; geographical limitations; and social and cultural constraints, such as age, gender, health, and social and familial ties. Those factors may, or may not, be relevant, depending on all the circumstances of the case, and are not necessarily determinative of whether it would be reasonable for the applicant to relocate.2

While the regulatory language is broad and non-exhaustive, the specific mention of climate change factors in the White House report is most welcome, as such circumstances might not otherwise jump out at immigration judges and asylum officers as being relevant to the relocation inquiry.

Thirdly, the White House report states that “[c]limate activists, or environmental defenders, persecuted for speaking out against government inaction on climate change may also have a plausible claim to refugee status.”

Although not specifically cited in the White House report, UNHCR issued guidance on the topic in October 2020.3 Practitioners should file both the White House report and the UNHCR guidance with EOIR and DHS in appropriate cases, as the latter clearly served as an influence for the former, and provides greater detail in its guidance.4 For instance, in discussing how climate change factors can influence internal relocation options, the UNHCR document at paragraph 12 makes clear that the “slow-onset effects of climate change, for example environmental degradation, desertification or sea level rise, initially affecting only parts of a country, may progressively affect other parts, making relocation neither relevant nor reasonable.” This detail not included in the White House report is important; it clarifies that the test for whether relocation is reasonable requires a long view, as opposed to limiting the inquiry to existing conditions, and specifically flags forms of climate change that might otherwise escape an adjudicator’s notice.

Also, in paragraph 10, the UNHCR document’s take on the White House report’s third example is somewhat broader, stating that “[a] well-founded fear of being persecuted may also arise for environmental defenders, activists or journalists, who are targeted for defending, conserving and reporting on ecosystems and resources.”5 UNHCR’s inclusion of journalists as potential targets, and its listing of “defending, conserving, and reporting” as activities which a state might lump into the category of “speaking out” and use as a basis for persecution, should be brought to the attention of adjudicators.

Given how early we are in the process of considering climate change issues in the asylum context, the above-cited language in the White House report is important, as it provides legitimacy to theories still unfamiliar to the ears of those adjudicating, reviewing, and litigating asylum claims. It is hoped that EOIR and DHS will immediately familiarize its employees who are involved in asylum adjudication with the report. And as EOIR and DHS consider next steps in developing guidance and training, it is hoped that they will consider a collaborative approach, including in the discussion those outside of government who have already given the topic a great deal of thought.6

Copyright 2021 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Notes:

8 CFR 208.13(b)(2)(ii).

Id.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Legal considerations regarding claims for international protection made in the context of the adverse effects of climate change and disasters, 1 October 2020, https://www.refworld.org/docid/5f75f2734.html, at para. 12.

Although UNHCR’s views on interpreting the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol are not binding on the U.S. Immigration Courts, they have been found by the BIA to be “useful tools in construing our obligations under the Protocol.” Matter of Acosta, 19 I&N Dec. 211 (BIA 1985). See also INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 438-39 (1987).

Id. at para. 10.

See, e.g. “Shelter From the Storm: Policy Options to Address Climate Induced Displacement From the Northern Triangle,” https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/climate-change-and-displaced-persons.

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

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Jeffrey S. Chase is an immigration lawyer in New York City. Jeffrey is a former Immigration Judge and Senior Legal Advisor at the Board of Immigration Appeals.He is the founder of the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, which was awarded AILA’s 2019 Advocacy Award.Jeffrey is also a past recipient of AILA’s Pro Bono Award.He sits on the Board of Directors of the Association of Deportation Defense Attorneys, and Central American Legal Assistance.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/11/climate-refugees-far-right-crisis?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Failing to plan for climate refugees hands a cheap victory to the far right

Zoe Williams

The climate crisis could cause mass displacement as land is left uninhabitable – nations have to work together to plan for this

Thu 11 Nov 2021 03.00 EST

Last modified on Thu 11 Nov 2021 03.02 EST

As scientists wrestle to predict the true impact and legacy of Cop26, one speech, given at a rally organised by Global Justice Now, insisted upon a perspective not data-driven but moral. Lumumba Di-Aping, a South Sudanese diplomat and former chief negotiator for the G77, said: “The first resolution that should be agreed in Glasgow is for annex I polluters to grant the citizens of small island developing states the right to immigration.”

It was a tactful way of putting it: annex I nations are those with special financial responsibilities in tackling the climate crisis. They have these special responsibilities because their early industrialisation created so much of the carbon burden. A more pugilistic diplomat might have said “the people who created this disaster have to offer sanctuary to those displaced by it”, but then, he wouldn’t be a diplomat.

Di-Aping went on to note article 3 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” “Small island states,” he concluded, “should not be drowned alive like Zealandia.”

. . . .

As old debates around the climate crisis and whether or not it is anthropogenic give way to consensus, new ambiguities and uncertainties are constructed around refugees: can they really be called the victims of environmental degradation? We will grapple with any other explanation – they’re actually economic migrants, or they’re the victims of civil strife, or they fell foul of a dictatorship, the one-bad-man theory of geopolitics – rather than trace these proximal causes back to their roots. Most political efforts, currently, are geared towards building a positive picture of a sustainable future; the alternative is despair or denial, neither of which are generative forces for change. A coherent, practical plan detailing the probable scale of displacement and figuring out a just distribution of the climate diaspora will look radical and unsettling.

One group is extremely comfortable on that territory, however: the far right. Steve Bannon sent a chill down the spine in 2015 when he talked about a “Camp of the Saints-type invasion into … Europe”. He made the reference again and again, until finally onlookers were forced to read the source: Jean Raspail’s racist novel of 1973, which one contemporary reviewer called “a major event … in much the same sense that Mein Kampf was a major event”. The title comes from a passage in the Book of Revelation about the coming apocalypse – civilisation collapses when the hordes arrive from the four corners of the Earth to “surround the camp of the saints and the beloved city” – and Raspail took up the idea; it was inevitable, he said, that “numberless disinherited people of the south would set sail one day for this opulent shore”.

Through Bannon and others, this idea has replicated, mutated and engulfed others, to become the “great replacement theory” of white supremacists, which Paul Mason describes in his recent book How to Stop Fascism as the toxic political view that “immigration constitutes a ‘genocide’ of the white race”. Feminists help it along by depressing the birth-rate, and cultural Marxists bring the mood music, by supporting both migrants and feminists.

Other far-right movements are sucked into the vortex of this wild but coherent theory, and yet more are spawned or shaped by it: the cosmic right (embodied in Jake Angeli, the QAnon figure in the animal-skin cap who stormed the Capitol in January, then went on hunger strike in prison because the food wasn’t organic), or the eco-minded white supremacists who make this explicit – you can be a humanitarian or an environmentalist. Choose one.

As fanciful and irrational as many far-right arguments are, they have a rat-like cunning. They find these spaces that are untenanted by mainstream debate – there will be climate refugees and they must be accommodated – and they run riot in them. Nations who ignore Lumumba Di-Aping aren’t doing anything to avert the consequences he describes: their silence merely creates an open goal for the professed enemies of a peaceful and prosperous future.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

*********

Read Zoe’s complete article at the link.

Usually White House Reports and other quasi-academic “White Papers” produced at public expense are accompanied by major press releases and momentary hoopla. Then, they are rapidly consigned to the “Dustbin of History.”

They are widely ignored by politicos and bureaucrats who all too often are pursuing policies with little or no empirical basis, but designed to appease or “fire up” some voting block or to further the institutional self-preservation upon which bureaucracies thrive, expand, and prosper, even at the expense of the well-being of the governed!

This report, however, is one that deserves to be the basis for policy action! Too bad it isn’t!

Obviously, an Administration that failed to restore existing refugee and asylum systems, continues to subject migrants to due process denying “star chambers,” thinks “die in place” is an acceptable and effective refugee policy, and wrongly views asylum as a “policy option” rather than a well-established legal and human right, is playing right into the hands of Bannon, Miller, and their 21st Century nihilist movement! It’s also an Administration that didn’t learn much from World War II and the Cold War.

And, on future inevitable and predictable forced migrations, the world isn’t going to get much leadership from a rich nation that can’t even deal fairly, generously, and efficiently with today’s largely predictable, potentially very manageable, refugee situations. Many are situations that our nation either created or played a significant role in creating. See, e.g., environmental migration.

There is actually “room at the inn” for everyone and creative ways for nations to work together to resettle refugees of all types while prospering and working together for the benefit of humanity. Sure, they contradict the nationalist myths upon which many past and current refugee and migration restrictions are based.

Clearly, the realistic, constructive, humane solutions necessary for survival aren’t going come from the racist far right! And, currently the Biden Administration’s failure to stand up for the legal, moral, and human rights of asylum seekers and other referees isn’t doing the job either! Constructive, democratic, moral leadership and courage, oh where, oh where, have you gone?

We can’t deport, imprison, prosecute, wall, threaten, mythologize, abuse, and hate our way out of forced migration situations. It’s going to take dynamic, courageous folks who can get beyond past failures and lead the way to a better future for humanity!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-24-21

‘SIR JEFFREY” CHASE: Garland’s “First Steps” To Eradicate Misogyny & Anti-Asylum Bias @ EOIR Are Totally Insufficient Without Progressive Personnel Changes — Regulations Will Only Be Effective If Drafted By Progressive Human Rights Experts Of Which There Currently Are NONE @ DOJ Save For Some Immigration Judges In The Field Whose Expertise, Intellectual Integrity, & Moral Courage Has Been Ignored By Team Garland! — There Will Be No Gender, Racial, Or Immigrant Justice @ Justice As Long As Garland Mindlessly Lets “Miller’s Club Denial” Operate @ BIA! — Progressives Must Turn Up The Heat On Garland To Reform & Remake EOIR With Qualified Expert Judges & Dynamic, Independent, Progressive Leaders!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2021/6/21/first-steps

The latest from the Hon. “Sir Jeffrey:”

JEFFREY S. CHASE | OPINIONS/ANALYSIS ON IMMIGRATION LAW

Blog Archive Press and Interviews Calendar Contact

First Steps

On June 16, Attorney General Merrick Garland finally, mercifully vacated three decisions that formed a key part of the Trump administration’s unrelenting attack on the law of asylum.1 Matter of A-B-, issued by Jeff Sessions in June 2018, took aim in particular at victims of domestic violence.2 Matter of L-E-A-, issued the following year by William Barr, sought to undermine protection for those targeted by gangs due to their familial ties.3 And on January 14, 2021, six days from the end of the Trump Administration, acting A.G. Jeffrey Rosen issued a second decision in A-B-, gratuitously criticizing the method for determining nexus in asylum claims employed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, while conveniently evading that court’s review of the original decision in the case through remand.4

Garland’s action restores the law to where it stood prior to June 11, 2018, but only for the time being. Proposed rules on the subject (which Garland referenced) are due by October 30, when they will first be subjected to a period of public comment. If final rules are eventually published, it will occur well into next year.

As we sigh in collective relief and celebrate the first steps towards correcting our asylum laws, let’s also take note of the imperfect place in which the case law stands at present.

As to domestic violence claims, the BIA’s 2014 decision in Matter of A-R-C-G- (which Matter of A-B- had vacated) has been restored as binding precedent.5 That decision was issued at a time when (as now) regulations addressing particular social groups were being contemplated by DHS and EOIR.6 While A-R-C-G- was an extremely welcome development, the Board used it to recognize a rather narrowly-defined group: “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship.” In a footnote to the decision, the Board declined to address the argument of several amici (including UNHCR) that a particular social group may be defined by gender alone. Although A-R-C-G- led to many grants of asylum, some immigration judges relied on the limited scope of the group’s definition to deny claims involving slightly broader variations, in particular, where the victim was not legally married, but nevertheless in a domestic relationship that she was unable to leave. While the BIA reversed some of those denials in unpublished decisions, it declined to speak to the issue through binding precedent.

As to Matter of L-E-A-, Garland’s recent action returns us to the BIA’s original opinion in that case.7 While the decision acknowledged that families constitute particular social groups (a point that was not in dispute, having been universally recognized for some 35 years and stipulated to by DHS), the BIA still denied asylum by invoking a legally incorrect standard for establishing nexus that it has continued to apply in all family-based asylum claims.

For these reasons, the content of the forthcoming regulations will be extremely important in determining the future of asylum in this country. While a return to the test for social group cognizability expressed in the BIA’s 1985 precedent in Matter of Acosta tops most regulation wish lists, I will focus the discussion here on a couple of more specific items necessary to correct the shortcomings of Matter of A-R-C-G- and Matter of L-E-A-.

First, the regulations need to explicitly recognize that a particular social group may be defined by gender alone. In its 2002 Gender Guidelines, UNHCR identified women “as a clear example of a social subset defined by innate and immutable characteristics, and who are frequently treated differently than men,” and whose “characteristics also identify them as a group in society, subjecting them to different treatment and standards in some countries.”8 However, over the nineteen years since those guidelines were issued, the BIA has consistently avoided considering the issue.

The peril of defining gender-based groups in the more narrow manner employed by the BIA has been addressed by two distinguished commentators, who explain that such practice results in “constant re-litigating of such claims,” sometimes creating “an obstacle course in which the postulated group undergoes constant redefinition.”9 And of course, that is exactly what has happened here, as A-R-C-G- gave way to A-B-, which led to differing interpretations among different courts until Garland’s recent reset. The above-mentioned commentators further decried the “nitpicking around the margins of the definition” resulting from the narrow approach when the true reason for the risk of persecution to the applicant “is simply her membership in the social group of ‘women.’”10 Regulations recognizing gender alone as a particular social group would thus provide clarity to judges and asylum officers, eliminate the wastefulness of drawn out litigation involving “nitpicking around the margins,” and bring our laws into line with international standards.

But as L-E-A- demonstrates, recognition of a group alone does not guarantee asylum protection. In order for a group’s recognition to be meaningful, the regs must also address an ongoing problem with the BIA’s method for determining nexus, or whether persecution is “on account of” the group membership.

The BIA is accorded deference by Article III courts when it reasonably interprets immigration laws, provided that the meaning of the language in question is ambiguous. However, the “on account of” standard included by Congress in defining the term “refugee” is quite clear; its meaning is long established, and in fact, is not particular to immigration law.

The Supreme Court referenced this standard last year in a non-immigration case, Bostock v. Clayton County. The Court explained that the test

incorporates the “‘simple’” and “traditional” standard of but-for causation…. That form of causation is established whenever a particular outcome would not have happened “but for” the purported cause….In other words, a but-for test directs us to change one thing at a time and see if the outcome changes. If it does, we have found a but-for cause.11

In a 2015 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit applied this exact test in the asylum context to conclude that persecution was on account of family, determining that the petitioner’s “relationship to her son is why she, and not another person, was threatened with death if she did not allow him to join Mara 18.”12 But for some reason, the BIA has felt entitled to reject this established standard outside of the Fourth Circuit in favor of its own excessively restrictive one.

Had the proper test for nexus been employed in L-E-A-, asylum would have been granted. Under the facts of that case, once the familial relationship is removed from the equation, the asylum-seeker’s risk ceases to exist. However, the BIA instead imposed an incorrect test for nexus requiring evidence of an “animus against the family or the respondent based on their biological ties, historical status, or other features unique to that family unit.”13

As a former circuit court judge, Garland is particularly qualified to recognize the error in the Board’s approach, as well as the need to correct its course. The problem is compounded by the particular composition of the BIA at present. For example, of the ten immigration judges who were promoted to the BIA during the Trump administration, nine denied asylum more than 90 percent of the time (with the tenth denying 85 percent of such claims). Three had an asylum denial rate in excess of 98 percent.14

This matters, as those high denial rates were achieved in part by using faulty nexus determinations to deny asylum in domestic violence claims, even before the issuance of Matter of A-B-. This was often accomplished by mischaracterizing the abuse as merely personal in nature, referencing only the persecutor’s generally violent nature or inebriated state. The analysis in those decisions did not further examine whether gender might also have been one central reason that the asylum seeker, and not someone else, was targeted.

One BIA Member appointed under Trump recently found no nexus in a domestic violence claim by concluding that the persecutor had not targeted the asylum seeker because of her membership in the group consisting of “women,” but rather because she was his woman. There is no indication in the decision that the Board Member considered why the persecutor might view another human being as belonging to him and lacking the same rights he seems to enjoy. Might it have been because of her gender?

Without a correction through published regulations, there is little reason to expect different treatment of these claims moving forward. Let’s hope that the Attorney General views his recent action as only the first steps on a longer path to a correct application of the law.

Copyright 2021, Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Notes:

Matter of A-B-, 28 I&N Dec. 307 (A.G. 2021) (“A-B- III”); Matter of L-E-A-, 28 I&N Dec. 304 (A.G. 2021) (“L-E-A- III”).

27 I&N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018) (“A-B- I”).

27 I&N Dec. 581 (A.G. 2019) (“L-E-A- II”).

28 I&N Dec. 199 (A.G. 2021) (“A-B- II”).

26 I&N Dec. 388 (BIA 2014).

The regulations under consideration at that time were never issued.

27 I&N Dec. 40 (BIA 2017) (“L-E-A- I”).

UNHCR, Guidelines on International Protection: Gender-Related Persecution within the context of Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention and/or its 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (May 2002) at para. 30.

James C. Hathaway and Michelle Foster, The Law of Refugee Status, Second Edition (Cambridge University Press, 2014) at 442.

Hathaway and Foster, supra.

Bostock v. Clayton County, 140 S.Ct. 1731, 1739 (2020).

Hernandez-Avalos v. Lynch, 784 F.3d 944, 950 (4th Cir. 2015).

L-E-A- I, supra at 47.

See TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse) Immigration Judge Reports https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/judgereports/.Republished with permission.

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

Without progressive intervention, this is still headed for failure @ EOIR! A few things to keep in mind.

- Former Attorney General, the late Janet Reno, ordered the same regulations on gender-based asylum to be promulgated more than two decades ago — never happened!
- The proposed regulations that did finally emerge along the way (long after Reno’s departure) were horrible — basically an ignorant mishmash of various OIL litigation positions that would have actually made it easier for IJs to arbitrarily deny asylum (as if they needed any invitation) and easier for OIL to defend such bogus denials.
- There is nobody currently at “Main Justice” or EOIR HQ qualified to draft these regulations! Without long overdue progressive personnel changes the project is almost “guaranteed to fail” – again!
- Any regulations entrusted to the current “Miller Lite Denial Club” @ the BIA ☠️ will almost certainly be twisted out of proportion to deny asylum and punish women refugees, as well as deny due process and mock fundamental fairness. It’s going to take more than regulations to change the “culture of denial” and the “institutionalized anti-due-process corner cutting” @ the BIA and in many Immigration Courts.
- Garland currently is mindlessly operating the “worst of all courts” — a so-called “specialized (not) court” where the expertise, independence, and decisional courage is almost all “on the outside” and sum total of the subject matter expertise and relevant experience of those advocating before his bogus “courts” far exceeds that of the “courts” themselves and of Garland’s own senior team! That’s why the deadly, embarrassing, sophomoric mistakes keep flowing into the Courts of Appeals on a regular basis.
- No regulation can bring decisional integrity and expertise to a body that lacks both!
- Any progressive who thinks Garland is going to solve the problem @ EOIR without “outside intervention” should keep this nifty “five month snapshot of EOIR under Biden” in mind:
  - Progressive judges appointed to BIA: 0
  - Progressive judges appointed to Immigration Court: 0
  - Progressives installed in leadership positions @ EOIR permanently or temporarily: 0
  - Billy Barr Selected Immigration Judges Appointed: 17
  - “Miller Lite” holdover individuals still holding key positions @ EOIR: many (only two removed to date)
  - Number of BIA precedents decided in favor of respondent: 2
  - Number of BIA precedents decided in favor of DHS: 9

That’s right, folks: Billy Barr and Stephen Miller have had more influence and gotten more deference from Garland at EOIR than have the progressive experts and advocates who fought tirelessly to preserve due process and to get the Biden Administration into office. How does that a make sense?

“Miller Lite” – Garland’s Vision of “Justice @ Justice” for Communities of Color — Finally vacating two grotesquely wrong anti-female, anti-asylum precedents hasn’t ended the “Miller Lite Unhappy Hour” for migrants and their advocates at Garland’s foundering DOJ!

Progressives, advocates, and NGOs must keep raising hell until we finally get the “no-brainer,” long overdue, obvious, personnel, legal, structural, institutional, and cultural changes at EOIR that America needs! Waiting for Judge Garland to get around to it is like “Waiting for Godot!” Perhaps worse — I don’t recollect that anyone died waiting for Godot!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! The BIA Denial Club, Never!🏴‍☠️

PWS

06-22-21

Eduardo Porter writes in WashPost:

Gordon F. Sander, journalist and historian, also writes in WashPost, perhaps somewhat less optimistically, but with the same historical truth in the face of current political lies and gross misrepresentations:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Felipe writes:

How a little-known, century-old law perpetuated the odious notion that certain types of immigrants degrade our nation’s character

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Elliot Spagat reports for AP:

Here’s the Executive Summary:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Here are some ideas from Simon Rosenberg at Hopium on Substack on how Dems can make immigration a centerpiece for success in 2024:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Doubt the comparison? Check this out:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Dan Kolbert in the Portland Press Herald:

Maine has tacked left as nation lurches right in culture wars

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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From the Portland Press Herald:

Don’s views echo several previous postings from Courtside:

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🗽DISSENTING OPINION: TRADING AWAY REFUGEE RIGHTS & DUE PROCESS FOR LONG OVERDUE DREAMER PROTECTIONS IS “NOT OK!”

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

Dec. 6, 2022

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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“Undesirable Immigrants: Why Racism Persists in International Migration”

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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These items were posted together this week on LexsNexis Immigration Community:

USCIS Contact Center is More a Source of Frustration than Assistance

The Lifeguard is Drowning: Identifying and Combating Burnout and Secondary Trauma in Asylum Practitioners (Free ABA Webinar)

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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The latest from the Hon. “Sir Jeffrey:”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! The BIA Denial Club, Never!🏴‍☠️

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