Washington Post – Page 6 – immigrationcourtside.com

🗽👍HUMANITY WINS: FOOD, SHELTER, REPRESENTATION, TEAMWORK, OVERCOME DeSANTIS’S & ABBOTT’S CRUEL SHENANIGANS! — DeSantis created “a picture of a carefully orchestrated, taxpayer-funded operation with little apparent concern for the interests of the migrants caught in the middle.”

Beth Reinhard
Investigative Reporter
Washington Post
PHOTO: WashPost Website

Maria Sacchetti
Immigration Reporter, Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/25/desantis-perla-migrant-flight-marthas-vineyard/

This WashPost article by Beth Reinhard, Maria Sacchetti, and Molly Hennessy-Fiske sets forth in detail how the courage and perserverance of asylum seekers, the humanity and initiative of the local community in Martha’s Vineyard, timely assistance by the Massachusetts Government, and heroic efforts by pro bono lawyers, came together to “redirect” the cruelty behind nativist GOP Govs’ idiotic political stunt.

. . . .

Nearly two weeks later, though, Jose is one of dozens of migrants who now question Perla’s efforts to entice them onto a flight that unexpectedly ended on the wealthy island of Martha’s Vineyard — a political operation engineered by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to gin up outrage over the United States’ border crisis.

Much remains unknown about the effort. While DeSantis has embraced his role in staging the flight, arguing that it protected Florida from “negative ramifications” of a border crossing surge, his office has been less clear about the purpose of nearly $1.6 million paid to a contractor, according to state records, and the role of state officials in developing the plan.

But Post interviews with several migrants directly recruited by Perla, as well as court documents and state records, paint a picture of a carefully orchestrated, taxpayer-funded operation with little apparent concern for the interests of the migrants caught in the middle. Florida officials began researching Texas’s migrant situation weeks before the flights, and a contractor with ties to the DeSantis administration later handled the efforts. Some migrants, meanwhile, say they were misled into signing documents after being lured into the trip with food and hotel stays.

. . . .

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Read the complete article at the link.

Imagine what could be accomplished if Texas and Florida officials actually worked to HELP resettle individuals in an orderly and reasonable manner that recognized their humanity and respected and facilitated their legal rights to apply for asylum and other protections in the US? What if the Biden Administration actually brought in a team of qualified experts to lead and operate our existing refugee and asylum systems fairly and effectively instead of using stale approaches and personnel who simply lack the skills, vision, and courage to get the job done?

Fortunately, the asylum seekers, NGOs, and state and local officials, and ordinary citizens in welcoming American communities have stepped up to get the job done notwithstanding the glaring failures and counterproductive efforts of the previously-mentioned groups!

The preposterous attempt by DeSantis to link “sanctuary” with asylum seekers! Loosely speaking, “sanctuary jurisdictions” are those that have declined to voluntarily cooperate with certain ICE enforcement activities, primarily directed at so-called “civil” immigration enforcement.

But, the Venezuelan asylum seekers “orbited” to Martha’s Vineyard had all been examined by DHS and released to pursue their legal requests for asylum in the US! Indeed, most probably turned themselves in to DHS Enforcement after being forced to cross illegally to present claims that the U.S. Government (with the connivence of GOP state Attorneys General and biased right wing Federal Judges) has refused to accept at legal ports of entry as they are supposed to do under our laws.

These individuals are NOT “wanted” by ICE enforcement. There is no connection whatsoever between any “sanctuary jurisdiction’s” decision not to cooperate with ICE enforcement in rounding up certain individuals for possible deportation and legal asylum seekers from Venezuela (or any other country) pursuing their claims, beyond the fact that sanctuary jurisdictions value human dignity and are more welcoming to migrants of all types and statuses when called upon to provide assistance to them.

Venezuelan asylum seekers are part of the larger forced exodus of 6-7 million Venezuelans escaping the repression of the Maduro regime. 95% of these forced migrants have found refuge in countries OTHER than the U.S. Colombia is the largest destination country with at least 1.7 million Venezuelans, many times more than the U.S.

The vast majority of Venezuelans have found refugee in countries far poorer and less able to resettle them than the U.S. The idea that “sanctuary policies” of Martha’s Vineyard or any other U.S. jurisdiction is driving Venezuelan asylum seekers is beyond absurd. Indeed, it now appears that the Venezuelan asylum seekers “orbited” to Martha’s vineyard as part of the DeSantis scheme neither knew where it was nor had any idea they were being sent there until they were well on their way!

Indeed, the decision to send these individuals to an island with neither a DHS Office nor an Immigration Court (as opposed to, say, resettling them in Boston with advance notice), and with few “own site” pro bono lawyers, actually undermined their ability to comply with legal requirements and squandered resources that could and should have been put into getting timely and fair adjudications of their legal asylum applications. But, even in the face of GOP-led efforts to create maximum chaos, these legal asylum seekers and their supporters are committed to making our legal system work — against all odds!

Finally, congrats to Molly Hennessy-Fiske, long time LA Times immigration reporter who has now joined the team at WashPost!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-26-22

🏴‍☠️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.

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

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

CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST — The GOP’s “Performative Cruelty” Is Bad Policy!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/immigrants-marthas-vineyard-desantis-performative/

. . . .

Not to mention that even the Trump administration (the Trump administration!) found that refugees and asylees are a net positive for public budgets over the long run. That is, despite typically arriving penniless, these immigrants ultimately pay more in taxes than they receive in government benefits.

Michele L. Norris: What Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis don’t understand about America

Contra DeSantis’s insinuations about immigrant moochers, these are people who want to work and become economically self-sufficient. That’s presumably why DeSantis’s own henchmen promised fictitious jobs to lure the asylum seekers onto flights.

. . . .

If Republican officials actually wanted to reduce the number of people coming to the border without advance permission, there are plenty of things these politicians could do. They could push for expansion of guest-worker visas, for instance. Or more funding for the refugee admissions program. Or really any other legal, orderly pathway to come to the United States.

After all, the main reason there is such a crush at the border — and why the asylum system in general is so overwhelmed — is that right now this is one of the very few legal ways to get to America.

Yes, I said legal: The families being hoodwinked and shipped around the country like chattel on chartered buses and flights are here lawfully, based on what’s been publicly reported. They turned themselves in upon crossing the border precisely so that they can apply for asylum, as is their legal right. The federal government has screened them, and granted them humanitarian parole while they pursue their asylum cases in court.

It’s not an ideal system. Or an especially fast one. It would be much better to fix the rest of our broken legal immigration system so that those other, more orderly pathways are available. Especially the pathways that offer quicker access to work permits, given America’s current massive labor shortages.

It’s true that Democrats have also put forth relatively little effort to fix these problems. In some cases Democrats seem fearful of appearing too pro-immigrant, having apparently bought into the GOP lore that deep down Americans are xenophobes. But even what little Democrats have tried to do they generally can’t do without 60 Senate votes. Which Democrats don’t have.

Democrats need Republicans to cooperate on immigration reform, and Republicans won’t. Even when those reforms are coupled with investments in border security that Republicans claim to want. The GOP would rather keep around a dragon they can perpetually promise to slay one day — and better yet, to taunt and torture for a while, in public, first.

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

Read Catherine’s complete article at the link. Interesting that Catherine understands so much so well, while those in the Biden Administration charged with immigration and human rights policy are so clueless, timid, and inept!

In the meantime, the Dems have done little to make the current laws relating to refugees and asylum work. The much-hyped “asylum rule changes” at DHS have had little, if any, discernible positive impact. EOIR is a national disgrace — continuing the “death spiral” that accelerated during the Trump kakistocracy. The refugee system remains in shambles. The proposed 15,000 allocation of refugee admissions for FY 2023 to Latin American and the Caribbean is an insult and a “signal” to other receiving nations in the area that we are not serious about addressing the problem. There is no rational resettlement program for asylum seekers crossing the border, thus providing an unnecessary opening for the “performative cruelty” of clowns like DeSantis and Abbott.

None of these things are “rocket science” or “budget busters.” They just require knowledgeable leadership, values, and the courage to act on them. Apparently, faced with the cruelty and desecration of values by the “MAGA GOP,” the Dems think that “all they have to do is show up, smile, and mumble platitudes” to seem like the only choice for Americans who believe in democracy. Maybe — but I wouldn’t count on it!

I think that Catherine “hit the nail on the head” with this assessment of the spineless policy officials driving refugee and asylum policies in the Biden Administration: “In some cases Democrats seem fearful of appearing too pro-immigrant, having apparently bought into the GOP lore that deep down Americans are xenophobes.” Cowardice on immigrants, immigrants’ rights, and racial justice has become an endemic problem in the Democratic Party.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS
09-22-22

🇺🇸⚖️🗽AMERICANS MUST REJECT THE FAR-RIGHT’S FICTIONAL “INVASION” CHARADE & THE REST OF THE BOGUS ANTI-IMMIGRANT AGENDA — It’s Racism, Pure & Simple — There Is No “Invasion,” “Replacement Theory” Is A Racist Trope, The Borders Aren’t “Open,” Asylum Seekers Aren’t Trafficking Fentanyl (the very suggestion is facially absurd), & There Is More Than Enough Detention & Enforcement, Just Not Very Smart, Effective, Or, In Some Cases, Even Legal!☠️

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/01/republican-immigration-ads-invasion/

By Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent in WashPost:

. . . .

But over the airwaves and online, another story is playing out: an absolute torrent of ads meant to frighten and anger voters about immigration.

A new report from the pro-immigration group America’s Voice seeks to document this ongoing phenomenon. One of its key conclusions: “Republicans have made their nativist narrative a top messaging priority.”

In the world of Republican campaign ads, very little has changed since the xenophobic Trump presidency, and some of what’s in these ads is truly repellent.

Three themes dominate these ads, the report finds, and they are all wildly inflammatory and profoundly dishonest: The Biden administration has created “open borders,” undocumented immigrants are responsible for fentanyl overdoses and a full-blown “invasion” is underway.

The borders are anything but open; the Biden administration is pursuing, arresting and deporting people seeking to come to the United States by the thousands. The vast majority of fentanyl that comes in is smuggled through ports of entry in cars, boats and planes, not carried by undocumented immigrants. And as for an “invasion,” that’s no more true now than it was when Trump warned that caravans were about to overrun the country.

But the Republican ads portray horror and chaos — usually with a non-White face. Some ads show pictures of young Black men walking through rivers on their way to “invade” America, with language suggesting this “invasion” brings “terrorists, drugs and crime.”

Other ads say the Biden administration is supposedly “importing 20 million illegals and giving them amnesty” (the image for that one is people in Haiti), which can only be stopped by “a declaration of invasion.”

In some ads it’s not just an open border but a “wide open border” — once again, illustrated with pictures of Haitians. In others we’re told that “human, sex and drug trafficking are out of control because of Democrat governance,” while Democratic candidates “refuse to oppose Biden’s open border policy.”

Of course, there is no open border policy, but why should the fact that it doesn’t exist stop Democrats from opposing it? That just shows how sinister they are, these ads say, because they “want to destroy this country.”

All of this captures something essential about this political moment. For months, Republicans were certain they could spread fears of chaos in order to ride to victory in the midterms. They’d run on crime and immigration, not just to excite the base but also to scare unsettled swing voters.

Yet the dynamic unexpectedly shifted, and now disorder and, dare we say it, crime — as in the potential crimes of Donald Trump and many Jan. 6 defendants — are not necessarily playing in the GOP’s favor. The overturning of Roe v. Wade has unleashed another form of chaos and a host of new dangers threatening women. And all of these things are energizing Democrats.

. . . .

“Republicans are indulging in the worst kind of White nationalist rhetoric,” Frank Sharry, the executive director of America’s Voice, told us. “And an issue they thought would win over swing voters is at best a base mobilizer for voters they already have.”

What makes this all really ugly, however, is that the messaging remaining under the radar — which Democrats bear some blame for, having gone quiet on the issue — allows it to continue mostly unexamined. This, even though its worst incarnations — such as “great replacement theory” — have inspired recent mass shootings.

Along these lines, it’s worth keeping an eye on Blake Masters, the GOP Senate candidate in Arizona. He has trafficked heavily in great replacement theory and has run truly vile ads on immigration, including one that features machine-gun fire at the border. Yet in a place President Biden won by a whisker that’s also a border state, Masters is trailing by a meaningful margin.

As Sharry told us, Masters’s whole “declare an invasion” line “is not working, in a state where one-third of the voters are independents and border security is a top issue.”

Yet whether it works with independents and swing voters, this foul sewage has been flowing unabated. And it will surely continue to do so.

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

Read the complete article at the link.

The idea that individuals seeking to find a U.S. official who will listen to their asylum cases would be trucking along large amounts of fentanyl in their backpacks is facially absurd.

Ending scofflaw Trump failures to follow asylum and refugee laws at the border and beyond would not halt all illegal entries. No policy will do that, nor has there ever been one that even came close, although illegal incursions have risen and fallen over the years.

But, fair refugee and asylum programs that actually interpreted the applicable domestic and international laws correctly (instead of the “any reason to deny, no matter how wrong attitude” still widespread and tolerated at both Mayorkas’s DHS and Garland’s DOJ) and generously granted protection as was the intention behind the UN Refugee Convention in the first place would certainly encourage large segments of those now forced to irregularly cross the border instead to apply abroad or at legal ports of entry.

It would also facilitate the USG working with NGOs, the UNHCR, states, and localities to get individuals needed assistance so that their legal claims could be processed in a fair, efficient, and timely manner. The latter objectives seem to have totally eluded both Mayorkas and particularly Garland. They continue to “blow off the experts” and flounder with mindless, “designed to fail,” “deterrence-focused” gimmicks. Talk about a lose-lose!

Also to state the obvious, if CBP were less focused on apprehending individuals who pose no real threat to the U.S., but merely want a fair shot at applying for legal protection — something our laws require that Trump annihilated, the Federal Courts have flubbed, and Biden has done a substandard job of re-instituting — they would have time to focus more resources on drug and human smugglers.

Instead, in perhaps one of the dumbest and most wasteful juxtapositions in recent American history, the CBP focus is on “apprehending” (a term I use lightly, since many individuals “want” to be “found,” so they can get access to the system otherwise improperly denied to them by CBP) those merely seeking to comply with the law! To do that, CBP ignores or misses many of those who actually pose threats. At the same time, both DHS and DOJ use methods, attitudes, and legal interpretations that themselves undermine fundamental fairness, the rule of law, and humanity itself.

Immigrants are America’s past, present, and future! Indeed, climate change, rising oceans, drought, starvation, transportation improvements, globalized commerce, wars, religious bigotry, pandemics, and other factors beyond the control of any one government will continue to drive worldwide migration.

Building walls, prisons, hate, resentment, and constructing bogus “invasion myths” will not change the reality of human migration and the necessity to adopt to and harness it in a smart, humane, realistic manner. Doing the opposite, will only diminish us as a nation and inhibit our own chances for future prosperity. But, in the end, it won’t stop human migration.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-04-22

🏴‍☠️CRISTIAN FARIAS @ VANITY FAIR: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A MAJORITY OF A DEMOCRACY’S TOP JUDGES NO LONGER BELIEVE IN DEMOCRACY & ARE UNWILLING TO DEFEND IT?☠️

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/08/post-roe-scotus-is-on-a-collision-course-with-democracy

After destabilizing the nation over abortion, and moving further right on guns, climate, and religion, the conservative justices’ sights are on affirmative action, voting rights, and a fringe legal theory that could empower Trump-friendly state legislatures for future elections.

BY CRISTIAN FARIAS

AUGUST 25, 2022

On the eve of his retirement, the nation’s first Black justice and constitutional giant, Thurgood Marshall, took a moment to denounce the Supreme Court of the United States over its “radical” path of abandoning past decisions for no other reason than the court’s membership had changed. Owing to these shifts in personnel, Marshall charged, now “scores of established constitutional liberties” hung in the balance, the powerless were left defenseless, and the court’s own authority and legitimacy were diminished. “Power, not reason, is the new currency of this Court’s decisionmaking,” Marshall warned in 1991, in what turned out to be his final dissenting opinion.

The dissenting justices in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the watershed case that discarded nearly 50 years of American jurisprudence protecting a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy, felt the need to quote from Marshall’s decades-old warning because power, indeed, is the only sensible explanation for the Supreme Court’s present course. The seismic end of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, two pillars of a much larger structure of unenumerated constitutional rights the high court has erected over almost a century, was neither legally necessary nor a product of profound changes in American society. Instead, five justices tore these precedents off the law books, ushering in a new era of abortion criminalization and second-class citizenship for half the nation, simply because they could—and had the numbers to do so. “Neither law nor facts nor attitudes have provided any new reasons to reach a different result than Roe and Casey did,” wrote Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan in their anguished Dobbs dissent. “All that has changed is this Court.”

As radical and destabilizing as the fall of Roe is for our most intimate personal decisions, beyond just abortion rights, its ripples will extend to other areas where the conservative justices are already smelling blood. Not satisfied with the erasure of just one constitutional right, Clarence Thomas, writing separately in Dobbs, indicated that contraception and same-sex marriage could be next. That future begins now. These actions and other signals make abundantly clear what Marshall foresaw: The Supreme Court is on a collision course with democracy itself. Dobbs merely sets the stage.

Every new justice creates a new court, the maxim goes. Yet for much of their time on the bench, Justice Samuel Alito, long a soldier in the Republican holy war to curtail abortion rights, and Thomas, an avowed Roe antagonist, had the will but not the votes to impose their antiabortion vision on the majority of the Supreme Court, much less on the rest of the country. Their fortunes, and power, changed with the election of Donald Trump, whose own marriage of convenience with white evangelicals and social conservatives paved the way for his presidency and the installation of three new justices of a different mold, all of them more extreme and lacking the moderation of Republican appointees of the past, including those who made Roe and Casey possible.

Next to this “restless and newly constituted Court,” as Sotomayor branded this new majority in June, Chief Justice John Roberts looks as weakened as ever. The Supreme Court may bear his name, and the chief may have come of age during the abortion wars of the 1980s and ’90s, but neither his title nor institutionalist bent could convince the reactionaries to his right that their power grab in Dobbs represented “a serious jolt to the legal system” that he simply could not join in full. Too much, too soon. To the Trump justices, plus Thomas and Alito, this shock to the nation could not come soon enough.

Nominated by a president who lost the popular vote and narrowly confirmed by a Senate plagued by minority rule, these justices—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—were all groomed for this moment. All of them were grown in the test tube of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal brain trust that for decades has been a judicial pipeline for Republican administrations and state governments, which since the time of Ronald Reagan have made the fall of Roe a white whale of their politics.

. . . .

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Read the rest of the article at the link.

Cristian creates an interesting vignette. The Justices take a few minutes to gather to welcome Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Court. Then, the Right Wing Majority goes to work ignoring her views, insuring her marginalization, and pushing a minority agenda drawing into question her very existence as a person under law.

The conclusion of the article is perhaps most illustrative of the uncertain future of democracy, human rights, equal justice, and indeed basic human decency:

“Women are not without electoral or political power,” wrote without irony the five justices who ended their right to be full and equal citizens before the law in Dobbs. In asserting power rather than reason over what remains of our less than perfect union, the Supreme Court may well unravel democracy with it, taking us down a path from which there is no return.

Quite an achievement for a Court now dominated by those appointed by Presidents whose election (initial or sole) contravened the will of the majority of voters.

“Better Judges for a Better America!” Why not start with your “wholly owned and operated” Immigration Courts, Merrick Garland?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-29-22

More from today’s WashPost on the threat to our democracy posed by the anti-democracy, scofflaw GOP and their right wing judges:

William Webster and William Cohen on how today’s MAGA-infested GOP has become a cult of the lawless: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/mar-a-lago-fbi-attacks-lawless-gop/

E.J. Dionne on how the “off the rails, far right” GOP Supremes’ majority threatens humanity’s future with their anti-scientific, anti-government, anti-truth far right agenda: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/west-virginia-epa-inflation-reduction-act/

Jennifer Rubin on how one distinguished Senior U.S. District Judge, a Clinton appointee, stood up to the GOP’s anti-abortion overreach: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/federal-judge-pushback-idaho-abortion-ban/

🐥COWARDLY MAGA GOP CLAIMS TO SUPPORT LAW ENFORCEMENT — UNTIL THEY ACTUALLY ENFORCE THE LAW! — JRUBE @ WASHPOST

Jennifer Rubin
Opinion Writer
Washington Post

Jennifer Rubin writes at WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/14/distinguished-persons-fbi-agents-are-patriots-unlike-maga-republicans/

As MAGA thugs are wont to do, their reaction to the lawful search at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, which we now know might have been related to nuclear secrets (which Trump has denied), amounted to an stream of insults and threats designed to whip up unhinged, violent characters.

While the exact motives of the person who attacked FBI offices in Cincinnati on Thursday remain unknown, reports indicate he was in D.C. in the days leading up the Jan. 6 insurrection and might have been at the U.S. Capitol that day. The GOP’s cycle of incitement and violence continues.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray was properly outraged. “Unfounded attacks on the integrity of the FBI erode respect for the rule of law and are a grave disservice to the men and women who sacrifice so much to protect others,” he said in a written statement on Thursday. “Violence and threats against law enforcement, including the FBI, are dangerous and should be deeply concerning to all Americans. Every day I see the men and women of the FBI doing their jobs professionally and with rigor, objectivity, and a fierce commitment to our mission of protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution. I am proud to serve alongside them.”

. . . .

**********************
Read the full op-Ed at the link.

Here’s one of the ways the MAGA GOP insurrectionists show “support” for laws and law enforcement:

Jan 6 MAGA Rioters — DC Capitol Storming IMG 7951.jpg
Crowd of Trump supporters marching on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, ultimately leading the building being breached and several deaths. PHOTO: Creative Commons License.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-15-22

🏴‍☠️☠️DANA MILBANK @ WASHPOST: THE JIM CROW GOP WAS AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY LONG BEFORE TRUMP — Today’s Absurdist & Corrupt GOP Reaction TO DOJ’s Long Overdue Investigation Of Trump’s Treason & Criminality Is The Predictable Result Of Many Years Of Corrupt, Racist, Authoritarianism!

\https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/dana-milbank-republican-destructionists-book-excerpt/

. . . .

Much has been made of the ensuing polarization in our politics, and it’s true that moderates are a vanishing breed. But the problem isn’t primarily polarization. The problem is that one of our two major political parties has ceased good-faith participation in the democratic process. Of course, there are instances of violence, disinformation, racism and corruption among Democrats and the political left, but the scale isn’t at all comparable. Only one party fomented a bloody insurrection and even after that voted in large numbers (139 House Republicans, a two-thirds majority) to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 election. Only one party promotes a web of conspiracy theories in place of facts. Only one party is trying to restrict voting and discredit elections. Only one party is stoking fear of minorities and immigrants.

Admittedly, I’m partisan — not for Democrats but for democrats. Republicans have become an authoritarian faction fighting democracy — and there’s a perfectly logical reason for this: Democracy is working against Republicans. In the eight presidential contests since 1988, the GOP candidate has won a majority of the popular vote only once, in 2004. As the United States approaches majority-minority status (the White population, 76 percent of the country in 1990, is now 58 percent and will drop below 50 percent around 2045), Republicans have become the voice of White people, particularly those without college degrees, who fear the loss of their way of life in a multicultural America. White grievance and White fear drive Republican identity more than any other factor — and in turn drive the tribalism and dysfunction in the U.S. political system.

Other factors sped the party’s turn toward nihilism: Concurrent with the rise of Gingrich was the ascent of conservative talk radio, followed by the triumph of Fox News, followed by the advent of social media. Combined, they created a media environment that allows Republican politicians and their voters to seal themselves in an echo chamber of “alternative facts.” Globally, south-to-north migration has ignited nationalist movements around the world and created a new era of autocrats. The disappearance of the Greatest Generation, tempered by war, brought to power a new generation of culture warriors.

Dana Milbank: In the GOP, the paranoid fringe is becoming the establishment

But the biggest cause is race. The parties re-sorted themselves after the epochal changes of the 1960s, which expanded civil rights, voting rights and immigration. Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” began an appeal to White voters alienated by racial progress, and, in the years that followed, a new generation of Republicans took that racist undertone and made it the melody.

It is crucial to understand that Donald Trump didn’t create this noxious environment. He isn’t some hideous, orange Venus emerging from the half-shell. Rather, he is a brilliant opportunist; he saw the direction the Republican Party was taking and the appetites it was stoking. The onetime pro-choice advocate of universal health care reinvented himself to give Republicans what they wanted. Because Trump is merely a reflection of the sickness in the GOP, the problem won’t go away when he does.

. . . .

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

Read the full excerpt from “The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party” by Dana Milbank at the link.

As I noted in yesterday’s post, racially charged lies, myths, knowingly false narratives, and bogus attempts to tie migrants to all the ills of society are a key part of the GOP’s toxic narrative! The continuing campaign of hate and misinformation began with immigrants — but as this article suggests, it won’t end until either the GOP is thrown out of office at all levels or our nation’s constitutional structure and democratic republic are in tatters!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-09-22

📦OUTSIDE THE BOX: THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION SHOULD USE REFUGEE ADMISSIONS + NON-GOV SPONSORSHIPS TO START BREAKING THE LOGJAM @ OUR SOUTHERN BORDER — & THE RESULTING BOON TO SMUGGLERS & HUMAN TRAFFICKERS — CAUSED BY SCOFFLAW RIGHTY FEDERAL JUDGES & CORRUPT GOP NATIVIST AGs!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/18/refugee-sponsored-ukraine/

Americans should be able to sponsor refugees who can stay permanently

The U.S. does too little for too few, but Canada has a program worth adopting and improving

Perspective by l

July 18, 2022 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

The war in Ukraine has created one of the biggest refugee crises since World War II, with about 7 million people fleeing the country. While some have since returned, and some have settled elsewhere in Europe, there are still many in need of a permanent haven. Unfortunately, the American refugee system is proving to be of comparatively little help.

Even before President Donald Trump, the refugee resettlement process was slow and cumbersome, but Trump made things much worse by slashing the annual refugee quotas to a low of 18,000 for fiscal 2020 and 15,000 for fiscal 2021, before Biden increased it, which in turn led many resettlement organizations to shut down or scale back. President Biden raised the 2021 cap to 62,500 in May of that year — and set a cap of 125,000 for 2022 — but has not been able to restore the resettlement infrastructure that Trump undercut. As a result, the higher quotas remain largely unfilled, with a record-low 11,411 refugees admitted in 2021, even though many more would love to come. Even in the current fiscal year, the administration expects to fall far short of its target, Axios reports.

The Biden administration has tried to ease the logjam — at least for Ukrainian victims of Russian aggression — by creating the Uniting for Ukraine program, under which private citizens can sponsor Ukrainian refugees. Ukrainians wishing to enter must first get a U.S.-citizen sponsor, who has to prove that they can financially support the new arrival for two years; they must also pass certain health and security checks. The Ukrainians can seek permission to work but may stay for only two years. U.S. sponsors have filed applications on behalf of some 60,000 Ukrainians under this policy. The administration has pledged to help at least 100,000 Ukrainians relocate overall.

The war in Ukraine is on track to be among modern history’s bloodiest

The program is a decent start, but it could be improved by adapting a similar, better-run Canadian program.

Since 1979 — inspired by the massive numbers of people displaced by the Vietnam War and its aftermath — Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees program has allowed ordinary people and community groups to support refugees financially and otherwise for 12 months (or until the refugee is self-sufficient, whichever comes first). Sponsors can include private citizens working together (a “Group of Five”) or a group that holds a sponsorship agreement with the Canadian government, such as a religious institution or cultural organization. In an important contrast with the U.S. program, the refugees can stay permanently after the sponsorship period, and the program is not limited to people from specific nations. The combination of monetary assistance with more personal support, such as helping refugees find language classes or sign their children up for schools, gives the refugees a chance to hit the ground running. The recipients of private aid must be a refugee as defined by the United Nations (or according to a few other criteria). In 2022, Canada’s target number for privately sponsored refugees is 31,255, while the goal for government-sponsored refugees is 19,790. Relative to Canada’s population size — just over a tenth that of the United States — these figures are several times higher per capita than Biden’s unmet quota of 125,000.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

Creative “out of the box” thinking, innovation, practical solutions, expertise, bold moves, and moral courage have been largely lacking in the Biden Administration’s approach to refugees and asylees.

While the authors seem largely focused on the plight of Ukrainian refugees, there is no reason why their proposal couldn’t be used for many refugees of color from Haiti, Latin America, and elsewhere at the Southern border.

Additionally, there are no known legal avenues for racist GOP AGs and GOP scofflaw Federal Judges to successfully challenge refugee admissions. Doesn’t mean they won’t try. But, the DOJ should be able to fend off the effort.

Undoubtedly, out of control righty judges have helped GOP states with ugly White Nationalist xenophobic agendas to improperly seize control of immigration policy from Congress and the Executive. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-biden-republican-states-lawsuits/. Their target — individuals of color and women — is clear.

The result — an ungodly mess that empowers cartels and smugglers while putting “life or death” decisions in the hands of lower level bureaucrats who can act arbitrarily and without effective guidance — is totally unacceptable and a mockery of the rule of law. The Administration must use every tool at its disposal to resist this dangerous right-wing judicial overreach that undermines democracy.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-24-22

🇺🇸⚖️INDEPENDENCE = FREEDOM FROM THE FOUNDING FATHERS & THE GROTESQUE RIGHT WING “ORIGINALIST” BS 💩 THAT THREATENS OUR NATION’S FUTURE! — Paul Waldman @ WashPost

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/04/july-4-declare-independence-founding-fathers/

. . . .

We saw it in the recent Supreme Court decisions that supercharged the legal philosophy of “originalism” on abortion and guns. Reproductive rights, said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., are neither found in the explicit words of the Constitution nor “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions,” so they don’t exist as rights. As for states that want to regulate guns, said Justice Clarence Thomas, only regulations that have “a distinctly similar historical regulation” from the 18th century will be allowed. The America of 1789 becomes a prison the conservative justices can lock us all in whenever it suits them.

Originalism was a scam from the start, a foolproof methodology for conservatives to arrive at whatever judicial result matches their policy preferences: Cherry-pick a few quotes from the Federalist Papers, cite an obscure 1740 ordinance from the Virginia colony one of your clerks dug up, then claim that scripture leads us inexorably to only one outcome.

By happy coincidence, that outcome is always the one Republicans seek. Anyone who disagrees, or who shows how absurd the right’s historical analysis is even on its own terms, simply isn’t respecting the divine will of the framers.

. . . .

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

The “immigration/human rights/racial justice” community was one of the first to see the unconscionable human carnage and grotesque legal perversions produced by right-wing restrictionist/nativist politicos and judges.

The “founding fathers” were, of course, folks who, for all their vision and achievements, recognized slavery was wrong but continued to exploit a slave society, enshrined slavery in our original Constitution, and even went so far as to define slaves as 3/5 of a person to insure their White owners could exercise disproportionate and unjustified political power while giving those whose labor and humanity they stole no political or legal rights whatsoever.

In other words, these were complex, brilliant, yet deeply flawed and morally challenged individuals, who institutionalized and enshrined “dehumanization” or “de-personification” of “the other” because it was expedient and served their purposes. There was a limit to their vision, creativity, wisdom, and courage. It mostly extended only so far as “free, White men who owned property (including, of course, human property).”

The rest of society has been slow on the uptake and even slower on taking effective concerted action against the perils of far-right “originalism” and other bogus right-wing dogmas which have somehow obtained “fake legitimacy” and now threaten our nation and our world.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-05-22

WENDY YOUNG @ KIND ON SAN ANTONIO TRAGEDY

Dear Paul –

The entire team at Kids In Need of Defense is devastated by the news that at least 46 people were found dead in an abandoned tractor-trailer in Texas and more than a dozen others in the truck, including children, were taken to local hospitals for treatment. While we wait for more details to emerge, we wanted to share the following statement from our President, Wendy Young.

“As rising violence, natural disasters, and other threats force migrants to make impossible choices in their quest to find safety, our nation’s response cannot be to place families and children in further harm by indefinitely closing our borders to people seeking protection and ignoring the dangers they face in their home countries. This most recent tragedy and the disturbing rise in migrant deaths globally underscore the need to create safer pathways to protection for refugees. The Biden Administration should see this heartbreaking tragedy for what it is, a clarion call to abandon deeply flawed and dangerous immigration policies. It must reinstate humane and orderly processing, including reopening official ports of entry, hiring child welfare experts to care for and screen children, and provide fair adjudication of protection claims. It is time for the United States to regain its footing as a leader in the protection of migrant families and children.”

– The KIND Team

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

The key part of Wendy’s statement: “including reopening official ports of entry, hiring child welfare experts to care for and screen children, and provide fair adjudication of protection claims.”

Denial rates for recent arrivals who manage to get hearings (see, e.g., Garland’s bogus “dedicated dockets,” — actually “dedicated to denial” and nothing else), many of them children and unrepresented, hover around 100%. They are “guided” by a “largely holdover,” anti-asylum BIA that lacks true asylum expertise and issues no positive precedents instructing judges on how to consistently and legally grant asylum. Consequently, there is no “fair adjudication” of asylum claims. That feeds the toxic nativist myth that nobody at the Southern Border is a “legitimate” asylum seeker.

Unless and until Garland tosses the unqualified jurists at EOIR and replaces them with experts committed to due process, fundamental fairness, and correct, generous, practical precedents and proper applications of asylum law, the system will remain in failure. It’s a monumental mistake by the Biden Administration not to fix that which they absolutely control — starting with the Immigration Courts at EOIR.

Refugees will continue to die at the hands of smugglers who were given control of our immigration system by the Trump Administration and remain empowered by Garland’s & Mayorkas’s poor performance combined with biased, White Nationalist, Federal Judges appointed by Trump at all levels of our failing justice system!

Today’s WashPost editorial described how far-right nativists have basically turned our immigration system over to smugglers:

The absence of any workable legal system that would admit migrants systematically, in numbers that would meet the U.S. labor market’s demand, is the original sin of the chaos at the border. That is Congress’s bipartisan failure, a symptom of systemic paralysis for many years. More recently, a public health rule has had the effect of incentivizing unauthorized migrants to make multiple attempts to cross the border. The rule, imposed by the Trump administration, retained for more than a year by the Biden administration, and now frozen in place by Republican judges, allows border authorities to swiftly expel migrants, but with no asylum hearings or criminal consequences for repeated attempts to cross the border. That has been a boon to migrant smuggling networks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/29/san-antonio-migrants-deaths-solutions/

I take issue with the term “bipartisan failure” in the legislative context. It’s true that the Dems inexplicably squandered a golden chance to fix many immigration problems when they had 60 votes in the Senate in Obama’s first two years. But, before and after that time, the failure to achieve realistic, humane, robust legal immigration reform legislation has been on the nativist right of the GOP that now dominates the party. Pretending otherwise is useless and dishonest.

Democrats have made numerous reasonable legislative proposals to bring Dreamers and other long-term productive residents of America out of the underground and into the legal mainstream of our society. Additionally, Veteran Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT) has introduced the Refugee Protection Act. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/11/24/professor-karen-musalo-la-times-we-can-restore-legality-humanity-to-u-s-asylum-law-thats-why-the-refugee-protection-act-deserves-everyones-support/ Also, Chairman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) has sponsored the “Real Courts Rule of Law Act of 2022.” https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/05/16/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8fimmigration-courts-article-i-bill-passes-out-of-house-judiciary-on-party-line-vote/.

All of these proposals would have made long-overdue, common sense reforms to eliminate hopeless backlogs, benefit our economy, strengthen our legal system, and facilitate better allocation of Government resources. Yet, there has been scant GOP interest in improving the system. The GOP appears to believe that promoting a dysfunctional immigration system, denying human rights, and guaranteeing a large “extralegal population” available as scapegoats and exploitable labor best serves their parochial political interests.

And, speaking of useless and dishonest, here’s Leon Krausze, WashPost Global Opinions Contributor, on how the disingenuous performance of Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has helped fuel both resurgent Mexican migration and unnecessary deaths at or near the border. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/29/san-antonio-migrant-deaths-trailer-mexico-amlo/.

The “good guys” — those committed to due process, fundamental fairness, individual rights, equal justice, scholarship, and human dignity — need to fight back at every level of our political and judicial systems — while they still exist! Because if the GOP has its way, that won’t be for long!🏴‍☠️

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-30-22

☠️ MORE THAN 40 MIGRANTS DEAD IN TEXAS TRAGEDY!

Arelis Hernandez and Nick Miroff report for WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/27/migrants-dead-texas/

SAN ANTONIO — At least 40 migrants were found dead in the back of a tractor-trailer in San Antonio Monday, according to two federal law enforcement officials briefed on the horrific finding.

Rescuers pulled at least 15 others from the vehicle and they were taken for medical treatment, said one of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide preliminary information.

The truck was found by agents from Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that specializes in human trafficking cases, one of the officials said. HSI agents are leading the investigation.

. . . .

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

Developing story. Read the complete version at the above link.

PWS

06-27-22

🚙🏞HEADING FOR THE HILLS: RADICAL ACTIVIST, RIGHTY, GOP SUPREMES EMPOWER GUNS, STRIP WOMEN OF RIGHTS, HEAD OUT FOR SUMMER VACATION, LEAVING BEHIND CHAOS & A DARK CLOUD HANGING OVER OUR DEMOCRACY’S FUTURE!😱

Dana Milbank @ WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/25/roe-guns-supreme-court-radicals-maximum-chaos/

Nobody should be surprised that the Supreme Court’s conservative justices on Friday jettisoned nearly 50 years of precedent upon precedent in overturning Roe v. Wade. Heck, they didn’t even honor their own precedent articulated 24 hours earlier.

In their opinion Thursday morning forcing New York and other densely populated states to allow more handguns in public, the conservative majority, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, argued that medieval law imposing arms restrictions — specifically, the 1328 Statute of Northampton — “has little bearing on the Second Amendment” because it was “enacted … more than 450 years before the ratification of the Constitution.”

Yet in their ruling Friday morning in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, setting women’s rights back half a century (and cracking the door to banning same-sex marriage and contraception), the conservative justices, led by Samuel Alito (who was also in the guns majority) and joined by Thomas, argued precisely the opposite. They justified abortion bans by citing, among others, “Henry de Bracton’s 13th-century treatise.” That was written circa 1250 and referred to monsters, duels, burning at the stake — and to women as property, “inferior” to men.

The right-wing majority’s selective application of history reveals the larger fraud in this pair of landmark rulings: Their reasoning is not legal but political, not principled but partisan.

Still, there is a commonality to the rulings. Both decisions foment maximum chaos and were delivered with flagrant disregard for the instability and disorder they will cause.

Ruth Marcus: The radical conservative majority’s damage to the Supreme Court cannot be undone

The high court was meant to be the guarantor of law and order. But the conservative justices, intoxicated by their supermajority, have abandoned their solemn duty to promote stability in the law and are actively spreading real-world disruption.

Worse, this invitation to disorder comes as the nation is trying to restore the rule of law after a coup attempt led by a president who appointed three of the five justices in the abortion majority. The spouse of a fourth — Ginni Thomas, Clarence’s wife — aggressively pushed state legislators and the White House to overthrow the election. Yet Thomas, the senior associate justice, has refused to recuse himself from related cases.

After decades of crocodile tears over imagined “judicial activism,” the conservative supermajority has shed all judicial modesty and embraced radicalism. The liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen G. Breyer, wrote in their Dobbs dissent that the majority’s brazen rejection of stare decisis, respect for precedent, “breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law.”

Opinion: The Supreme Court’s radical abortion ruling begins a dangerous new era

Even Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who joined the gun ruling, scolded fellow conservatives for blithely overturning the Roe v. Wade super-precedent. “Surely we should adhere closely to principles of judicial restraint here, where the broader path the court chooses entails repudiating a constitutional right we have not only previously recognized, but also expressly reaffirmed,” Roberts wrote. The majority’s “dramatic and consequential ruling is unnecessary,” he said, “a serious jolt to the legal system” that could have been avoided with a narrower decision that would have been “markedly less unsettling.”

Alito, in his (characteristically) sneering opinion in the abortion case, dismissed Roberts as unprincipled and public opinion as an “extraneous” concern. He likewise dismissed the pain the ruling would cause, writing that “this Court is ill-equipped to assess ‘generalized assertions about the national psyche.’ ” He washed his hands of answering the “empirical question” of “the effect of the abortion right … on the lives of women.”

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Milbank’s op-ed at the link.

It would be tempting to breathe a “sigh of relief” that while off on their taxpayer-underwritten summer frolic, the “Gang of 6” can’t do any more damage to our Constitution, our nation, our institutions, or humanity. But, unfortunately, that’s not completely true. If and when their party calls on them, they can always go into “emergency session.”

So let’s hope that there will be no further “emergencies” this summer other than the disorder and divisions already caused by their disingenuous political decrees masquerading as (very thinly to tragicomically inept and inconsistent) “jurisprudence.”

Still, those who enjoy their humanity and their rights (other than gun rights) shouldn’t get too complacent. Vacation will end; the Supremes will be back at it in October — looking for more ways to turn back the clock and “Dred Scottify the other,” even though the majority of Americans actually are “some kind of other.” With a little help from their GOP friends, they will disenfranchise and dehumanize one group at a time until rights and political power look largely like they did in 1789 — when free White men of property ruled.

As for CJ Roberts, after years of trying to put a “genial spin” on the mockery of a fair, impartial, and qualified judiciary incubating at his Supremes, he has totally lost control of the far-right extremists appointed by his party and, in some cases, pushed through the process in a highly irregular manner. Hard to have much sympathy there.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-27-22

⚖️🗽SOCIAL JUSTICE SUNDAY @ COURTSIDE WITH PROF/REV CRAIG MOUSIN OF DEPAUL LAW — 1) Restore The Refugee Act Of 1980 To Functionality; 2) Let Young People Read — Enforce the 1st Amendment Against Far-Right Book Burners!🔥📚👩‍🚒

Craig Mousin

cmousin@depaul.edu

Ombudsperson

Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, Grace School of Applied Diplomacy

Craig Mousin has been the University Ombudsperson at DePaul since 2001. He received a BS from Johns Hopkins University, a JD from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and an M Div from Chicago Theological Seminary. He joined the College of Law faculty in 1990, and served as the Executive Director of the Center for Church/State Studies until 2001, Acting Director until 2003, and co-director from 2004–2007. Mousin co-founded and continues to participate in the Center’s Interfaith Family Mediation Program. He has taught in DePaul’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, the Religious Studies Department, the Grace School of Applied Diplomacy, and the Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies program. He has also taught as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Illinois College of Law and Chicago Theological Seminary .

Prior to DePaul, he began practicing labor law at Seyfarth, Shaw, Fairweather & Geraldson in 1978. In 1984, Mousin founded and directed the Midwest Immigrant Rights Center, a provider of legal assistance to refugees which has since become the National Immigrant Justice Center. He also directed legal services for Travelers & Immigrants Aid between 1986 and 1990. The United Church of Christ ordained him in 1989. At that time, Wellington Avenue U.C.C. called him as an Associate Pastor. He was a founding co-pastor of the DePaul Ecumenica l Gathering (1996-2001). Mousin serves as a Life Trustee of the Chicago Theological Seminary. In addition, he is a member of the Leadership Council of the National Immigrant Justice Center, a member of the Leadership Council of the Marjorie Kovler Center for Survivors of Torture, a former President and member of the Board of the Eco-Justice Collaborative, and a former President and Board member of the Immigration Project of downstate Illinois. Mousin is a current member of the ABA Dispute Resolution Section Ombuds Committee.

Craig writes:

Comment: Paul,

You might be interested in a short interview I did with Chicago FOX news on World Refugee Day. I tied the celebration in with the honoring of Juneteenth. See:

https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fox32chicago.com%2Fvideo%2F1083587&data=05%7C01%7CCMOUSIN%40depaul.edu%7C657c113c57fc4b47977008da54895361%7C750d3a3f1f464da28a647605e75ea2f9%7C0%7C0%7C637915246031565627%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=R4WzOvpSp5k92DO8NgWD2IQjGyHBoEyq7krkBY82ESY%3D&reserved=0

Also, I do not know if you subscribe to my podcast, Lawful Assembly, but my last post tied together censorship of books in public schools with anti-immigrant sentiments. You can listen at:

https://lawfulassembly.buzzsprout.com/1744949/10803534-episode-27-stop-the-burning

All the best,

Craig

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

Thanks, Craig, for all you do.

Today’s WashPost Outlook Section contained a highly relevant article by author Dave Eggers about how far-right zealots — many with no real stake in our public schools — have taken over at local levels and apply extreme censorship — even to books and concepts that have been successfully and routinely taught for years. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/dave-eggers-book-bans-south-dakota/

In this case, it’s driving experienced teachers who believe in truth, freedom, and individual rights to flee in droves. So, what we’re really seeing is a shocking “dumbing down” of American education, libraries, and public discourse driven by far right fear-mongers seeking to impose their lack of values and intolerance on others.

We have seen this week how far-right activist extremists, from the Supremes to local politicians and school boards, have elevated guns that kill while gutting the individual rights to free speech, equal protection, and fundamental fairness guaranteed by the 1st, 5th, and 14th Amendments.

Justice Clarence Thomas is certainly a horrible jurist. But, in this instance he might be the only honest GOP appointee on the Supremes.

When Thomas says that immigrants’ human rights, gay rights, right to conception, marriage rights and most other meaningful individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution are on the chopping block, progressives had better believe him. Remember how “leaving things to the states” worked out for African Americans and other minorities attempting to exercise their fundamental rights, even after the Civil War and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. And, remember all those paeons to precedent and “not to worry” about Roe statements under oath from GOP Supremes’ candidates before they actually took their seats on the Court and started scheming to undo abortion rights for political, not legal, reasons!

“Social Justice Warriors” like Craig have been fighting the good fight for decades. But, at this point, it’s going to depend on the NDPA and other young progressive groups to take on the extremist right at the ballot box and to take back their individual rights — really all of our individual rights.

Otherwise, they will find themselves as a disempowered counterculture, hiding out and trying to keep ahead of Ray Bradbury’s firemen in Fahrenheit 451!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-26-22

📚BOOKS: “Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success” By Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan — Reviewed By Michael Luca @ WashPost!

Ran Abramitzky Professor of Economics and the Senior Associate Dean of the Social Sciences at Stanford University
PHOTO: Stanford.edu

Professor Leah Pratt Boustan
Economist
Princeton University
PHOTO: Princeton Website

Michael Luca
Lee J. Styslinger III Associate Professor of Business Administration Harvard Business School
PHOTO: has.edu

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/10/what-research-really-says-about-american-immigration/

. . . .

The reality is that immigration debates are often driven more by feelings than facts. And there is often disagreement about basic facts — such as how immigration has evolved over time, how successful immigrants become once they enter the United States and how they affect the communities they enter. The problem is, in part, a lack of accessible empirical evidence on the topic.

Enter “Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success,” a book by economic historians Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan that seeks to set the record straight, using an economics tool kit and a treasure trove of data. Their mission is twofold. First, to offer a data-driven account of the history of American immigration. Second, to provide guidance into what research suggests about the design of immigration policy.

The book reflects an ongoing renaissance in the field of economic history fueled by technological advances — an increase in digitized records, new techniques to analyze them and the launch of platforms such as Ancestry — that are breathing new life into a range of long-standing questions about immigration. Abramitzky and Boustan are masters of this craft, and they creatively leverage the evolving data landscape to deepen our understanding of the past and present.

In contrast with the rags-to-riches mythology, a more systematic look at the data shows that low-income immigrants do not tend to catch up to nonimmigrant income levels in their lifetimes. Instead, financially successful immigrants tend to come from more privileged backgrounds. To name a few: the authors point out that the father of Tesla chief executive Elon Musk “co-owned an emerald mine.” EBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s “father is a surgeon who worked at Johns Hopkins University,” and his “mother has a PhD in linguistics.” Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s “father is a professor of mathematics,” and his “mother is a NASA scientist.” Looking at how many companies have been led by high-skilled immigrants, I wonder how much more innovation we are missing out on by not further opening our doors to the world’s talent. Yet these are hardly tales of huddled masses.

The case that lower-income and lower-education immigrants also meet with success rests on assessing not only the fates of immigrants themselves but also those of their children and their children’s children. As it turns out, Abramitzky and Boustan write, “children of poor immigrants from nearly every country in the world make it to the middle of the income distribution.” Immigrants from mainland China, Hong Kong and India do especially well.

The book debunks myths that immigrants dramatically increase crime and displace U.S.-born workers. Much of this work focuses on natural experiments in which sudden shocks to immigration levels have allowed for a better understanding of cause and effect. For instance, the authors point to the 1980 Mariel boatlift, which brought an influx of Cuban immigrants to the United States, especially to Miami, virtually overnight. The surge of low-income immigrants did not lead to large spikes in unemployment for U.S.-born workers. Low-skill immigrants have a history of taking jobs that would otherwise be unfilled or filled by machines. As companies around America were rushing to automate operations, the influx of Cuban immigrants to the Miami area slowed this process, and jobs went to people rather than to machines. Compared with the rest of the country, businesses in high-immigration areas have access to more workers and hence less incentive to invest in further automation.

This has implications for today’s immigration debates: The United States is expected to face a dramatic labor market shortage as baby boomers retire and lower birthrates over time result in fewer young people to replace them. Increased immigration is one approach to avoiding the crunch. Notably, the other way to avert this crisis is through further automation, enabled by rapid advances in artificial intelligence. Immigration policy will help shape the extent to which the economy relies on people vs. machines in the decades to come.

Immigration is, of course, about more than economic activity. Part of its beauty is the cultural richness and diversity that it brings. A multicultural society is greater than the sum of its parts. Miami is exciting not because of assimilation but because of the culture that its diverse population has created. It’s a city where you can find croquettes and Cuban coffees as easily as pizza and burgers. There is a rich history of immigrants bringing new cuisines, which are then adopted and adapted throughout the United States, a journey that can be seen in the evolution of Italian American food.

Drawing on the research, Abramitzky and Boustan weigh in on a number of hot-button policy issues: For instance, should the United States focus on encouraging high-education immigration? They conclude that “policies designed to deter less-educated immigrants from entering the United States are misguided.” Discussing the border wall, they argue that “no one wins from the border fencing policies.” And on the 1.5 million undocumented immigrants who arrived as children, they make a full-throated argument in favor of “providing work permits and a path to citizenship,” noting that “the barriers that undocumented children face are stumbling blocks of our own making.” On this last point, it is hard to disagree. Our treatment of undocumented children is a stain on our nation.

In the end, the authors offer an optimistic message: “Immigration contributes to a flourishing American society.” In a rapidly evolving world, Abramitzky and Boustan urge us to take “the long view, acknowledging that upward mobility takes time, and is sometimes measured at the pace of generations, rather than years.”

. . . .

Michael Luca is the Lee J. Styslinger III associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and a co-author of “The Power of Experiments: Decision Making in a Data-Driven World.”

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

Read the complete review at the link. It contains Luca’s own family immigration story.

The research highlighted by this book clearly refutes the many negative myths about migrants upon which the Trump GOP’s “campaign of hate and misinformation” is based.

But, unfortunately, I wouldn’t expect truth about immigration — no matter how compelling and well-documented — to change many minds on the far right. As Luca says: “The reality is that immigration debates are often driven more by feelings than facts.” Sadly, hate, fear, racism, resentment, and intolerance are “powerful feelings.”

It’s going to take a combination of political power, courage and talent to exercise it boldly, education, and better values from the upcoming generations of younger Americans to overcome White Nationalism and its pernicious effects. I have to hope that there is time for the “long view” and our “better angels” to win the future.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-13-22

☹️👎🏽GOP’S ANTI-IMMIGRANT RANT THREATENS NATIONAL SECURITY!

Josh Rogin writes in the WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/02/republican-immigration-preventing-hong-kong-visas-brain-drain/

. . . .

“It’s a debate between those who think our openness as a democratic society is an advantage in the struggle with autocracies or a disadvantage,” Malinowski told me. “One of the central lessons of the Cold War was that it is an advantage. I just hope we choose the same strategy that won the Cold War.”

One thing that has changed since the Cold War is that now these skilled workers who are fleeing Russia and Hong Kong have more options. Some reports say 50,000 to 70,000 Russian tech workers fled to places such as Turkey, Georgia and the Baltic countries in the first weeks of the war in Ukraine. Hong Kong business leaders are decamping for Singapore. Canada has already expanded immigration for Hong Kongers with advanced degrees, and thousands are taking advantage.

The whole world is competing for the talents of those who are fleeing from Hong Kong and Putin’s Russia. Republicans’ excessive fear of immigration should not waste a strategic opportunity for the United States to strengthen itself and weaken its rivals at the same time. Congress should work to ensure that China’s and Russia’s losses are America’s gains.

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

Read Josh’s full op-ed at the link.

As the GOP threatens democracy, suppresses individual liberties, stymies innovation, and spreads White Nationalist fear mongering about immigrants, both documented and undocumented, they make the U.S. sound more and more like the country that “lost” the Cold War.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-04-22

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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