🏴‍☠️IT’S NOT YOUR FATHER’S GOP! — Today’s MAGA GOP Throws Refugees From Lefty Dictatorships Under The Bus Along With Most Of Humanity!🤮 We have a duty “to treat migrants humanely and incorporate as many of them as we lawfully and realistically can; and to oppose more effectively the despotism that is the root cause of their desperation.”

 

Charles Lane writes in WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/21/migration-cuba-nicaragua-venezuela-dictatorship/

. . . .

Like the 1980 and 1994 boatlift crises, the present one may be in part tacitly encouraged by the Havana regime, which, like its allies in Managua and Caracas, is closely aligned with Russia.

It is in these governments’ interest to export dissent and stir political trouble for President Biden — as the boatlifts did for his Democratic predecessors Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Notably, the exodus from Cuba accelerated after its ally Nicaragua ended its visa requirement for Cubans, making it far easier for the latter to reach the Central American isthmus — and continue on to the border.

Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela do not take their citizens back if deported from the United States, which renders the Biden administration all but powerless to deter the flow.

All of the above should inform the debate about “root causes” of migration, which, like so many of its predecessors, the Biden administration has promised to address. There is a related argument over the United States’ own culpability in the plight of people living under the three left-wing regimes. Washington has sanctioned each one for gross human rights violations, the most recent being Cuba’s nightmarish crackdown on protests that broke out in July 2021 and a similar round-up of dissidents by President Daniel Ortega’s regime in Nicaragua.

Even when the United States targets them to limit collateral damage, these measures can affect ordinary people and not just the regimes; obviously, too, millions have left non-communist countries in Latin America for a better life in the United States.

What is nevertheless undeniable is the historic debacle represented by the departure of over 6 million from Venezuela, whose population peaked at 30 million in 2015, when the main phase of the exodus began. That is a fifth of the entire country.

For Cuba, 200,000 emigrants in a year represents nearly 2 percent of its 11.3 million population. In Nicaragua, the 200,000 who have left since Ortega’s crackdown began four years ago, mostly for the United States and next-door Costa Rica, amount to 3 percent of a 6.6 million population.

U.S. sanctions, under which — for example — this country was still Cuba’s second-largest supplier of food imports in 2020, cannot possibly account for so many people “voting with their feet” against the systems they live under. The foreseeable failure of subjecting the economy to top-down control and denying people basic freedoms can.

The exodus is thus a tremendous compliment to the United States and other democratic capitalist countries. We should appreciate it. Meanwhile, it imposes duties: to treat migrants humanely and incorporate as many of them as we lawfully and realistically can; and to oppose more effectively the despotism that is the root cause of their desperation.

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Read the complete article at the link.

Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s in Wauwatosa, WI, then a GOP bastion, I remember that the party of Ike and Nixon never saw someone fleeing from Communism or lefty dictatorships that they didn’t swoon over. East Germans, Hungarians, the “Chang Gang” from China, Cubans, Russians, all were welcomed and viewed not only as great assets to America (which they were) but also as strong empirical evidence of the superiority of democracy over left-wing dictatorships!

In elementary and high school, I had good friends whose families had fled East Germany and Hungary. They were all hard-working folks who left much behind but “reinvented themselves” in a new environment.

Now,  the forces of xenophobia, hate, fear, and the hope of exploiting the foregoing for political gain have replaced more realistic and welcoming attitudes in MAGA land. It’s up to the rest of us to show that these “negative values and bad attitudes” don’t represent the real America! 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-24-22

 

🏴‍☠️NATION WITHOUT HEART, SOUL, OR LAWS: Emboldened By A Derelict Supremes’ Majority Unwilling To Stand For Constitutional, Legal, Or Human Rights Of Migrants, Trump Regime Continues To Misuse “Emergency” Powers To Illegally Repeal Immigration & Refugee Laws — “‘Flattening the curve’ should not be an excuse for dismantling the law,” Say Lucas Guttentag & Dr. Stefano M. Bertozzi in NYT Op-Ed! — Agreed! — But, That’s Exactly What’s Happening As The Article III Courts Dither!

Lucas Guttentag
Lucas Guttentag
Professor of Practice
Stanford Law
Stefano M. Bertozzi MD
Stefano M. Bertozzi MD
American Physician, Health Economist, & Educator

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/opinion/trump-coronavirus-immigration.html?referringSource=articleShare

Guttentag & Bertozzi write in the NYT:

For more than a month, under the guise of fighting the coronavirus, the Trump administration has used the nation’s public health laws as a pretext for summarily deporting refugees and children at the border.

This new border policy runs roughshod over legal rights, distracts from meaningful measures to prevent spread of the coronavirus and undermines confidence in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation’s top health protection agency, which delivered the directive that imposes these deportations.

The administration has weaponized an arcane provision of a quarantine law first enacted in 1893 and revised in 1944 to order the blanket deportation of asylum-seekers and unaccompanied minors at the Mexican border without any testing or finding of disease or contagion. Legal rights to hearings, appeals, asylum screening and the child-specific procedures are all ignored.

More than 20,000 people have been deported under the order, including at least 400 children in just the first few weeks, according to the administration and news reports. Though the order was justified as a short-term emergency measure, the indiscriminate deportations continue unchecked and the authorization has been extended and is subject to continued renewal.

The deportation policy was issued by the C.D.C. based on an unprecedented interpretation of the public health laws. The policy bears the unmistakable markings of a White House strategy imposed on the C.D.C. and designed to circumvent prior court rulings to achieve the administration’s political goals.

The Border Patrol is carrying out the C.D.C. directive by “expulsion” of anyone who arrives at U.S. land borders without valid documents or crosses the border illegally, not because they are contagious or sick but because they come from Mexico or Canada, regardless of their country of origin. The deportations violate the legal right to apply for asylum and ignore the special procedures for unaccompanied children.

Our immigration laws guarantee that any noncitizen “irrespective” of status, no matter how they arrive, is entitled to an asylum process. U.S. law has adopted the international obligation that refugees cannot be returned “in any manner whatsoever” to a place where they risk persecution. The courts have protected these rights again and again. When the administration tried to impose an asylum ban more than a year ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blocked it, calling it an “end-run” around Congress, a decision the Supreme Court refused to overturn.

Now, with the C.D.C. directive, the administration is imposing an even more sweeping prohibition on asylum by exploiting pandemic fears, and U.S. Border and Customs Protection is labeling the policy a public health “expulsion” instead of an immigration deportation.

Despite what the administration says, the order is not part of any coherent plan to stop border travel or prevent introduction or spread of contagious people or the virus, which is already widespread in the United States. Nothing limits travel from Mexico or Canada by truck drivers, those traveling for commercial or educational purposes, and many others, including green card holders and U.S. citizens. And the restrictions that exist do not apply at all to travel if it’s by airplane.

. . . .

The administration’s order expelling refugees and children tarnishes the C.D.C., does nothing to protect public health, targets the most vulnerable, tramples their rights and cloaks the deportations as fighting the coronavirus in order to escape accountability. “Flattening the curve” should not be an excuse for dismantling the law.

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Read the full op-ed at the link.

While the authors quite legitimately “out” the CDC for its corrupt performance, the real problem here goes much higher and cuts much more broadly across our failing democratic institutions of government. A feckless Congress, under the control of Moscow Mitch and the GOP, and the “J.R. Five” on the Supremes have given the “green light” to the Trump regime’s White Nationalist assault on the rights of asylum seekers and migrants. It’s “Dred Scottification” at its worst, and it threatens the continued existence of our nation and the lives and well-being of many of our fellow Americans.

Contrary to the tone-deaf op-ed published by Charles Lane in the WashPost today, the Supremes are not “stepping up.”https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-ginsburgs-and-kagans-recent-opinions-send-a-healthy-signal-about-the-supreme-court/2020/05/11/84119b1c-93a6-11ea-9f5e-56d8239bf9ad_story.html

They are a huge part of the problem: an institution charged with protecting our legal rights, including the rights of the most vulnerable among us, supposedly immune from partisan politics, that has abdicated that duty while hiding behind a barrage of right-wing legal gobbledygook. 

Why is it only the four “moderate to liberal” justices that have an obligation to cross over and help the conservatives, Charlie, my man? Where was Chief Justice Roberts when the regime carried out the “Miller White Nationalist plan” running roughshod over decades of well-established legal and constitutional rights of refugees, asylum seekers, children, and other migrants, using  rationales so thin, fabricated, and totally dishonest that most high school civics students could have seen right through them. How does a bogus Immigration “Court” system run by uber partisan politicos like Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and now Billy Barr come anywhere close to complying with the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment?

Pretending like the Supremes aren’t a broken, politicized institution won’t help fix the problem. Even “regime change” in November won’t get the job done overnight. 

The damage is deep, severe, life-tenured, and ultimately life-threatening. But, insuring that corrupt kakistocrats like Trump and Mitch won’t be in charge of future appointments to the Supremes and rest of the Federal Judiciary is an essential starting place. 

A failure to vote this regime out of office in November likely spells the end of American democracy, at least as the majority of us have lived and understand it. And, even though they obviously, and arrogantly, believe themselves to be above the fray and accountability for their actions, the “J.R. Five” eventually would go down in the heap with the rest of our nation.

If nothing else, Trump has made it very clear that HE is the only “judge” he needs, wants, or will tolerate. We have only to look as far as the failed and flailing Immigration “Courts” under Billy Barr to see what the “ideal Trump judiciary” would look and act like.

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

PWS

05-12-20

THE TRAGEDY OF EL SALVADOR IN THE AGE OF TRUMP: Linda Greenhouse @ NYT” – “[S]ince President Trump announced his decision, I’ve been obsessed not with its legality but with its cruelty and self-defeating stupidity.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/opinion/el-salvador-trump-immigration.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_ty_20180118&nl=opinion-today&nl_art=8&nlid=79213886&ref=headline&te=1

Greenhouse writes:

“Expulsions on the scale the Trump administration envisions are hardly unknown to history. Even modern countries, within memory, have sought to rid themselves of entire populations. It tends neither to turn out well nor reflect well on the expelling country. Two hundred thousand people may not sound like a huge number on a historic scale. But the population of San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital, is only 280,000. Money sent home by Salvadorans living abroad, most in the United States, where protected status conveys work authorization, amounts to 17 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, according to the country’s central bank. The destabilizing effect of cutting off this flow of capital is obvious.

The potential economic effects in this country are less obvious, but real. Contrary to what President Trump might think, the Salvadoran community is highly productive. According to the Center for Migration Studies, a think tank in New York affiliated with a Catholic group, the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Charles, 88 percent of Salvadorans participate in the labor force (the construction and food service industries are their biggest employers), compared with 63 percent of Americans as a whole. They pay taxes and own homes. Since individuals with protected status are ineligible for welfare and other social benefits, this is a group that contributes to the country while taking little.

And the human cost of expelling them is nearly unbearable. More than half have been in this country for at least 20 years. During that time they have become parents of some 200,000 United States-born citizens. Ten percent of the protected-status Salvadorans are married to legal residents. What exactly does the Trump administration think should become of these families? “Not even a dog would leave their babies behind,” Elmer Pena, an Indianapolis homeowner who has worked for the same company there for 18 years, said to USA Today. His children, United States citizens, are 10, 8 and 6 years old.

. . . .

Revisiting El Salvador’s bloody history is outside the scope of this column. But in this #MeToo era of standing with one’s fellow humans, it seems to me that we owe something to that country beyond the sundering of families and the expulsion of people who did exactly what they were supposed to do: make the best of the opportunity extended to them in grace nearly a generation ago. Were we a better country then? Are we comfortable with what we have become?”

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Read thge complete op-ed at the link.

And, over at the Washington Post, Charles Lane had this to offer:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-dangerous-threat-to-the-third-largest-hispanic-group-in-america/2018/01/17/44b1b6bc-fbac-11e7-a46b-a3614530bd87_story.html?utm_term=.4f0ff01e7347

Lane writes:

“This forgotten history has contemporary lessons, which we should try to understand lest President Trump’s policy prove not merely morally questionable but also counterproductive.

El Salvador is the most densely populated Spanish-speaking country on the planet; yet a small elite historically controlled its best farmlands.

The struggle for existence there is intense, sometimes violent. And so generations of Salvadorans have left in search of land and work — and tranquility. Neighboring Honduras was once a crucial demographic escape valve. The 1969 war closed it, and disrupted the Central American common market, destabilizing El Salvador politically. There was a savage 1979-1992 civil war between U.S.-supported governments and Marxist guerrillas.

That conflict drove hundreds of thousands to the United States, establishing a migratory pattern that continues to this day. The 2.1 million Salvadoran-origin people now constitute the third-largest Hispanic group in the United States, after those of Mexican and Puerto Rican origin, according to the Pew Research Center.

Salvadoran labor helped build the shiny new downtown of Washington, D.C., one of several cities — including Houston and Los Angeles — that would barely be recognizable anymore without a Salvadoran community.

. . . .

Still, he is correct to focus on the deeper causes of migration, and the United States’ chronic failure positively to affect them. At the very least, history provides cause for concern that, by ending “temporary protected status” next year for nearly one-tenth of all Salvadoran-origin people here, Trump might ultimately destabilize Central America further.

. . . .

At the same time, it would deprive the Salvadoran economy of millions of dollars in cash remittances, while requiring it to house and employ a large number of returnees.

Of course, that’s on the implausible assumption that most affected Salvadorans wouldn’t try to stay, thus swelling the very undocumented population Trump is supposedly bent on shrinking.

MS-13 itself metastasized in El Salvador as the unintended consequence of a (defensible) American effort, begun under the Clinton administration, to deport members convicted of crimes in the United States. The gang began in L.A.’s Salvadoran community; once back in El Salvador, its members took advantage of corrupt, weak law enforcement to expand and, eventually, reach back into the United States.

Of all the United States’ international relationships, surely the most underrated — in terms of tangible impact on people’s everyday lives, both here and abroad — is the one with El Salvador. Any policy that fails to take that into account is doomed to fail.”

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Read the complete article at the link.

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Of course the Trump Administration neither cares about the human effects on Salvadorans and their families nor fully understands and appreciates the adverse effects on both the U.S. and El Salvador. And, this Administration arrogantly and stupidly thinks that it can control human migration patterns solely by “macho” enforcement actions on this end. That’s why they are on track for an immigration policy that is “FUBAR Plus.” Others will be left to wipe up the tears and pick up the pieces! But, then, taking responsibility for failure isn’t a Trump specialty either.

PWS

01-19-18