Tag: immigration

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And You Thought Immigration Was Bad

The pictures, dismissive commentary, rationalizations and policy contradictions (if there really is a policy) surrounding immigration have shown that the RepubliTrump party is morally and ethically bankrupt.

But that’s not really the worst of it. In fact, all of this immigration horror might be a sideshow to what the party really wants to do to the country. And it’s all here.

That’s right, my fellow Americans; the conservative firebrands who have hidden behind the president’s coattails are finally in a position to undo the social safety net programs that have cushioned the middle class, protected the elderly, and given those who were neglected, left behind or just poor a fighting chance to be an integral part of American society.

Forget about the president’s dream of returning to 1984. We’re on our way back to 1884.

The tax cut that was passed last year was the first step. It created a huge budget deficit that the Republicans have no intention of addressing in any other way than with massive cutbacks in government spending to social programs. Combine the Labor and Education Departments? Great. Stop federal spending on research and development? All the better. Eviscerate the EPA? Already being done. And quite effectively, I might add.

The goal, of course, is to restore the government back to the role that conservatives view as the intended place of the federal government according to the Constitution and the debates of the 1780s. They also want to give big business free reign to run their affairs with minimal government oversight. Remember the last time that happened? It was called the Gilded Age and it resulted in the most massive redistribution of wealth and resources the country had ever seen until..today. And welfare was something you received at church.

Welcome to the restart. We’ve already seen regulations being rolled back, voting restrictions being implemented, crackdowns on immigration, Supreme Court decisions that treat corporations like people, and a tax cut that is providing a huge windfall to businesses while making many middle-class earners pay more. The president says that he’ll never make cuts to Medicare and Social Security because those elderly voters elected him, but I can’t really trust that the GOP won’t try something to include those programs in their reorganization.

It is true that there are many programs that need to be pared back or cut. The problem is that the present administration has no nuance. All regulations are job-killers, all people on public assistance are lazy scheming trough-suppers, all immigrants are criminals, all Democrats are unpatriotic. All, all, all.

So get ready for the real work of the conservatives. It will be done as quietly as they can. It’s our job to yell it from the rooftops.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Donald Trump Donald Trump Featured Racism

Trump’s Immigration Policy Based on Ignorance and Hate

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 23: (AFP OUT) U.S. President Donald Trump reads the first of three Executive Orders he will sign in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on Monday, January 23, 2017. This one concerned the withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The others will be a US Government hiring freeze for all departments but the military, and "Mexico City" which bans federal funding of abortions overseas. (Photo by Ron Sachs - Pool/Getty Images)
I was actually looking for an uplifting article to post close to the holiday that might provide some confidence and hope. Then I came upon this posting that discussed the president’s thinking on immigration policy and how he reacted to court rulings that postponed the travel restrictions and immigration bans he tried to implement this year.
Appalling doesn’t really do justice to my reaction. According to six officials who were in the room with him, the president read a document that listed how many immigrants had received visas in 2017. Some of his responses:

More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president complained.

Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They “all have AIDS,” he grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there.

Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office.

Terrorists. AIDS victims. Hut dwellers.

This is the President of the United States deciding policy.

His thought process? Bigoted. Uninformed. Under-educated. Judgmental. Ignorant.

What’s worse is that he is dragging down the reputation of the United States with him.

It’s clear that the president is not just protecting the United States from predatory foreign companies or workers who come here and take jobs that American citizens want. He believes, according to the article, that immigration is bad for the country and that foreign ideas are inferior to American ones. His nationalism is small because it rests on the incorrect assumption that our culture is superior to all others.

It’s president Archie Bunker at your service.

I suppose the good news is that much of the rest of the world ignores this nativist babble for the racism that it is, and that an interconnected, sharing world is a safer one both economically and militarily. Even allowing Internet service providers the ability to block, throttle or slow down sites will not stop people from blurring borders and searching for the best price, the highest wage, and people they can work with. A minority of voters in the United sates voted for fear, suspicion and moral relativity. I am optimistic that the majority sees through his blather and negativity.

And with that, I wish you a happy holiday, a Happy New Year and all of the other happiness that all humans so richly deserve.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Alien and Sedition Acts Redux

When you really think about it, conservatives have wanted to take this country back to the beginning of the republic ever since Reagan was elected in 1980. After all, Antonin Scalia and the Originalists (which is a great name for a rock band, yes?) made their political and philosophical careers on interpreting the constitution according to what they believed to be the framer’s intent. And as long as Scalia and Thomas and the far right were on the fringe, it looked like the country might avoid the embarrassment of living in the 1790s.

That’s all changed, hasn’t it?

If the first month of the Trump administration was a bit of an organizational mess, the second month is proving to be a full court press on the nation’s values and mission. What was once a pair of bedrock beliefs–that anyone who could make a contribution to society was welcome here, and that a free press was the major check on executive and congressional power–seem to be under assault by the president (shudder) and his minions in the White House. They are now committed to actually breeding hatred, suspicion, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-intellectualism and undermining news organizations and journalists who dare to cover them critically.

Gone are the days, if they ever existed, where Americans could take some solace in the idea that Donald Trump was more moderate than his campaign words and that he would try to unify the country around change that would benefit the working and middle class. His screed in front of the Conservative Political Action Conference was a call to arms against fellow Americans who understand that fear and suspicion are the enemies of representative democracy, and Sean Spicer’s press wall against those news organizations that the administration blames for negative coverage is a dangerous admission that the Trump White House has little regard for facts or interpretation.

It makes sense, then, to think that we might be on the verge of new Alien and Sedition Acts (and reading the first paragraph of this entry made me laugh. The Soviet Union is gone, so just substitute Trump’s America). Far-fetched, you say? Banning immigrants is on the check list. Muzzling the press and making it illegal to criticize the president? Former, yes, the latter, not out of the realm of the possible. These laws were terrible enough in the 1790s, but they would be a catastrophe today. The president and Steve Bannon seem to be in agreement on challenging every mainstream media organization and demonizing their reporters and executives. They champion their own press that has, shall we say, a spotty record when it comes to reporting actual facts. They want to plug press leaks too. Anybody seen G. Gordon Liddy around?

Of course, this is all a great big Hypocrisy Woodstock love-in. When the press was using Russian leaks about Hillary Clinton, Trump encouraged more. When James Comey bombshelled the election 10 days before the vote, Trump was exultant. Now he’s blaming the FBI for being against him. And there will be more verbal attacks on other agencies as they inevitably will need to come into conflict with the White House, because it’s clear that Trump cannot be wrong. But don’t worry; he’ll tweet what’s correct.

None of this is normal. None of this has a precedent. None of this conforms to any notion of responsible presidential behavior. None of it. We are moving in reverse. Time to dig our heels in.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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ban all muslims Featured

Cleveland Doctor Forced To Leave Country on Donald Trump’s Order

I find it hard to believe that a nation of immigrants is refusing entry to other immigrants, based for the most part, on the immigrant’s religion. But for Donald Trump and his Republican backers, this is exactly the outcome they are after.

Hours after landing in New York on Saturday, a doctor at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic was forced to leave the country based on an executive order issued by President Donald Trump that bans visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days.

Her flight to Saudi Arabia took off minutes before a federal judge in New York put a temporary stay on turning back people in such situations.

Suha Abushamma, 26, is in the first year of an Internal Medicine residency program at the clinic and held an H-1B visa for workers in “specialty occupations.” Born and raised in Saudi Arabia, she holds a passport from Sudan, one of the seven countries from which Trump barred visitors.

On Saturday evening, Abushamma was forced to make a choice by Customs and Border Protection agents: She could leave the country voluntarily and withdraw her visa — or she could be forcibly deported, which would have prevented her from coming back to the United States for at least five years. The latter also would have resulted in a permanent black mark on her immigration record.

She asked for a delay but was refused, she said in a FaceTime interview with ProPublica while she was flying over the Atlantic on her way back to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is not one of the countries on Trump’s list, but because Abushamma’s passport is from Sudan, she was told she is covered by the executive order.

“I’m only in this country to be a doctor, to work and to help people — that’s it,” she said. “There’s no other reason.”

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