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Javier E

What Explains U.S. Mass Shootings? International Comparisons Suggest an Answer - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...hootings-us-international.html

guns debate international

shared by Javier E on 17 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • there is one quirk that consistently puzzles America’s fans and critics alike. Why, they ask, does it experience so many mass shootings?
  • Perhaps, some speculate, it is because American society is unusually violent. Or its racial divisions have frayed the bonds of society. Or its citizens lack proper mental care under a health care system that draws frequent derision abroad.
  • Though seemingly sensible, all have been debunked by research on shootings elsewhere in the world. Instead, an ever-growing body of research consistently reaches the same conclusion.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns.
  • Americans make up about 4.4 percent of the global population but own 42 percent of the world’s guns. From 1966 to 2012, 31 percent of the gunmen in mass shootings worldwide were American
  • Adjusted for population, only Yemen has a higher rate of mass shootings among countries with more than 10 million people — a distinction Mr. Lankford urged to avoid outliers. Yemen has the world’s second-highest rate of gun ownership after the United States.
  • Worldwide, Mr. Lankford found, a country’s rate of gun ownership correlated with the odds it would experience a mass shooting. This relationship held even when he excluded the United States, indicating that it could not be explained by some other factor particular to his home country
  • And it held when he controlled for homicide rates, suggesting that mass shootings were better explained by a society’s access to guns than by its baseline level of violence.
  • If mental health made the difference, then data would show that Americans have more mental health problems than do people in other countries with fewer mass shootings. But the mental health care spending rate in the United States, the number of mental health professionals per capita and the rate of severe mental disorders are all in line with those of other wealthy countries.
  • A 2015 study estimated that only 4 percent of American gun deaths could be attributed to mental health issues
  • countries with high suicide rates tended to have low rates of mass shootings — the opposite of what you would expect if mental health problems correlated with mass shootings.
  • Whether a population plays more or fewer video games also appears to have no impact. Americans are no more likely to play video games than people in any other developed country
  • Racial diversity or other factors associated with social cohesion also show little correlation with gun deaths. Among European countries, there is little association between immigration or other diversity metrics and the rates of gun murders or mass shootings.
  • America’s gun homicide rate was 33 per million people in 2009, far exceeding the average among developed countries. In Canada and Britain, it was 5 per million and 0.7 per million, respectively, which also corresponds with differences in gun ownership
  • the United States is not actually more prone to crime than other developed countries, according to a landmark 1999 study by Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins of the University of California, Berkeley.
  • Rather, they found, in data that has since been repeatedly confirmed, that American crime is simply more lethal. A New Yorker is just as likely to be robbed as a Londoner, for instance, but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process.
  • They concluded that the discrepancy, like so many other anomalies of American violence, came down to guns.
  • More gun ownership corresponds with more gun murders across virtually every axis: among developed countries, among American states, among American towns and cities and when controlling for crime rates. And gun control legislation tends to reduce gun murders, according to a recent analysis of 130 studies from 10 countries.This suggests that the guns themselves cause the violence.
  • From 2000 and 2014, it found, the United States death rate by mass shooting was 1.5 per one million people. The rate was 1.7 in Switzerland and 3.4 in Finland, suggesting American mass shootings were not actually so common.
  • But the same study found that the United States had 133 mass shootings. Finland had only two, which killed 18 people, and Switzerland had one, which killed 14. In short, isolated incidents. So while mass shootings can happen anywhere, they are only a matter of routine in the United States.
  • In China, about a dozen seemingly random attacks on schoolchildren killed 25 people between 2010 and 2012. Most used knives; none used a gun.
  • By contrast, in this same window, the United States experienced five of its deadliest mass shootings, which killed 78 people. Scaled by population, the American attacks were 12 times as deadly.
  • In 2013, American gun-related deaths included 21,175 suicides, 11,208 homicides and 505 deaths caused by an accidental discharge. That same year in Japan, a country with one-third America’s population, guns were involved in only 13 deaths.
  • This means an American is about 300 times more likely to die by gun homicide or accident than a Japanese person. America’s gun ownership rate is 150 times as high as Japan’s.
  • That gap between 150 and 300 shows that gun ownership statistics alone do not explain what makes America different.
  • The United States also has some of the weakest controls over who may buy a gun and what sorts of guns may be owned.
  • Switzerland has the second-highest gun ownership rate of any developed country, about half that of the United States. Its gun homicide rate in 2004 was 7.7 per million people
  • Swiss gun laws are more stringent, setting a higher bar for securing and keeping a license, for selling guns and for the types of guns that can be owned. Such laws reflect more than just tighter restrictions. They imply a different way of thinking about guns, as something that citizens must affirmatively earn the right to own.
  • The United States is one of only three countries, along with Mexico and Guatemala, that begin with the opposite assumption: that people have an inherent right to own guns.
  • The main reason American regulation of gun ownership is so weak may be the fact that the trade-offs are simply given a different weight in the United States than they are anywhere else.
  • After Britain had a mass shooting in 1987, the country instituted strict gun control laws. So did Australia after a 1996 shooting. But the United States has repeatedly faced the same calculus and determined that relatively unregulated gun ownership is worth the cost to society.
  • That choice, more than any statistic or regulation, is what most sets the United States apart.
  • “In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate,” Dan Hodges, a British journalist, wrote in a post on Twitter two years ago, referring to the 2012 attack that killed 20 young students at an elementary school in Connecticut. “Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”
Javier E

Lasers Reveal a Maya Civilization So Dense It Blew Experts' Minds - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ayan-city-discovery-laser.html

maya civilization americas

shared by Javier E on 05 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • Not far from the sites tourists already know, like the towering temples of the ancient city of Tikal, laser technology has uncovered about 60,000 homes, palaces, tombs and even highways in the humid lowlands.The findings suggested an ancient society of such density and interconnectedness that even the most experienced archaeologists were surprised.
  • More than 800 square miles of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala’s Petén region have been mapped, according to an exclusive report by National Geographic
  • But it is not only about protecting cultural treasures, Ms. Hernandez said. The project is part of a broad push to fight climate change, generate tourism dollars and prevent illegal activities like border trafficking and deforestation in protected areas.“This is a Guatemalan effort,” she said. “We need to marry the interest in pursuing scientific stories with our interest in finding a sustainable model for the area.”
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  • The Maya culture was known for its sophisticated approach to agriculture, arts and astronomy. The peak era for the civilization, which some archaeologists refer to as the Classic Period, is generally considered to have lasted from around A.D. 250 to 900.
  • The total population at that time was once estimated to be a few million, said Diane Davies, an archaeologist and Maya specialist based in the United Kingdom. But in light of the new lidar data, she said it could now be closer to 10 million.
  • “To have such a large number of people living at such a high level for such a long period of time, it really proves the fact that these people were highly developed, and also quite environmentally conscientious,” she said.
malonema1

Migrant caravan seeking asylum faces a tough uncertain future - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...tough-uncertain-future-n870156

US history crisis

shared by malonema1 on 01 May 18 - No Cached
  • TIJUANA, Mexico — More than a hundred migrants who made a grueling journey to the U.S. border were stranded on the last leg of their trip on Monday as they waited to plead their case to seek asylum after immigration officials said the crossing was at capacit
  • How long the asylum seekers will have to wait to plead their case is just the beginning of the uncertain and potentially monthslong process ahead of them. The port of entry remained at capacity Monday morning, an official with Customs and Border Protection said in a statement.
  • She broke down crying the day before after learning she would not be allowed to make her claim for asylum that day. She said she was seeking asylum after gang members came after her and her daughter because her boyfriend owed them money.
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  • Mensing said the group was prepared to wait outside the port of entry and was willing to risk the hurdles ahead because they were fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries. Many of the migrants are from Central America, predominantly Honduras.“No one is asking for some sort of immediate citizenship — the people on this caravan know that the most likely thing for them is that they will be detained indefinitely, they may be separated from their children,” said Mensing. “They’re not coming here because they think it’s easy, they’re coming here because they’re fearing for their lives.
  • The asylum seekers began their trek together near the Guatemalan border on March 25, making their way on foot, by train and by bus north through Mexico before coming to their destination at the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana. At one point the caravan numbered roughly 1,200, but its numbers have dwindled after some chose to seek asylum in Mexico and others decided not to risk turning themselves in to immigration authorities.
  • Immigration judges vary in whether they accept claims based on fear of violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Some judges permit asylum for women and children targeted by criminal gangs for recruitment, finding that they are persecuted due to "membership in a particular social group," but other judges do not
Javier E

Climate Change Threatens the World's Food Supply, United Nations Warns - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...limate-change-food-supply.html

climate change food supply methane

shared by Javier E on 08 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • The world’s land and water resources are being exploited at “unprecedented rates,” a new United Nations report warns, which combined with climate change is putting dire pressure on the ability of humanity to feed itself.
  • A half-billion people already live in places turning into desert, and soil is being lost between 10 and 100 times faster than it is forming
  • “One of the important findings of our work is that there are a lot of actions that we can take now. They’re available to us,” Dr. Rosenzweig said. “But what some of these solutions do require is attention, financial support, enabling environments.”
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  • Climate change will make those threats even worse, as floods, drought, storms and other types of extreme weather threaten to disrupt, and over time shrink, the global food supply
  • food shortages could lead to an increase in cross-border migration.
  • A particular danger is that food crises could develop on several continents at once
  • “The potential risk of multi-breadbasket failure is increasing,” she said. “All of these things are happening at the same time.”
  • The report also offered a measure of hope, laying out pathways to addressing the looming food crisis, though they would require a major re-evaluation of land use and agriculture worldwide as well as consumer behavior
  • Proposals include increasing the productivity of land, wasting less food and persuading more people to shift their diets away from cattle and other types of meat.
  • “People’s lives will be affected by a massive pressure for migration,” said Pete Smith, a professor of plant and soil science at the University of Aberdeen and one of the report’s lead authors. “People don’t stay and die where they are. People migrate.”
  • activities such as draining wetlands — as has happened in Indonesia and Malaysia to create palm oil plantations, for example — is particularly damaging. When drained, peatlands, which store between 530 and 694 billion tons of carbon dioxide globally, release that carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.
  • Between 2010 and 2015 the number of migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras showing up at the United States’ border with Mexico increased fivefold, coinciding with a dry period that left many with not enough food and was so unusual that scientists suggested it bears the signal of climate change
  • As a warming atmosphere intensifies the world’s droughts, flooding, heat waves, wildfires and other weather patterns, it is speeding up the rate of soil loss and land degradation, the report concludes.
  • Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
  • will also reduce food’s nutritional quality, even as rising temperatures cut crop yields and harm livestock
  • In some cases, the report says, a changing climate is boosting food production because, for example, warmer temperatures will mean greater yields of some crops at higher latitudes. But on the whole, the report finds that climate change is already hurting the availability of food because of decreased yields and lost land from erosion, desertification and rising seas
  • Overall if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, so will food costs, according to the report, affecting people around the world.
  • “You’re sort of reaching a breaking point with land itself and its ability to grow food and sustain us,”
  • agriculture itself is also exacerbating climate change.
  • the window to address the threat is closing rapidly
  • Every 2.5 acres of peatlands release the carbon dioxide equivalent of burning 6,000 gallons of gasoline
  • And the emissions of carbon dioxide continues long after the peatlands are drained. Of the five gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions that are released each year from deforestation and other land-use changes, “One gigaton comes from the ongoing degradation of peatlands that are already drained,”
  • (By comparison, the fossil fuel industry emitted about 37 gigatons of carbon dioxide last year, according to the institute.)
  • cattle are significant producers of methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, and an increase in global demand for beef and other meats has fueled their numbers and increased deforestation in critical forest systems like the Amazon
  • each year, the amount of forested land that is cleared — much of that propelled by demand for pasture land for cattle — releases the emissions equivalent of driving 600 million cars
  • The authors urge changes in how food is produced and distributed, including better soil management, crop diversification and fewer restrictions on trade
  • They also call for shifts in consumer behavior, noting that at least one-quarter of all food worldwide is wasted
  • But protecting the food supply and cutting greenhouse emissions can also come into conflict with each other, forcing hard choices. For instance, the widespread use of strategies such as bioenergy — like growing corn to produce ethanol — could lead to the creation of new deserts or other land degradation
  • The report also calls for institutional changes, including better access to credit for farmers in developing countries and stronger property rights
  • Planting as many trees as possible would reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by about nine gigatons each year
  • But it would also increase food prices as much as 80 percent by 2050.
  • “We cannot plant trees to get ourselves out of the problem that we’re in,
  • “The trade-offs that would keep us below 1.5 degrees, we’re not talking about them. We’re not ready to confront them yet.”
  • Preventing global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius is likely to require both the widespread planting of trees as well as “substantial” bioenergy to help reduce the use of fossil fuels
  • “Above 2 degrees of global warming there could be an increase of 100 million or more of the population at risk of hunger,” Edouard Davin, a researcher at ETH Zurich and an author of the report, said by email. “We need to act quickly
  • The same is true for planting large numbers of trees (something often cited as a powerful strategy to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere), which can push crops and livestock onto less productive land
  • “Agricultural practices that include indigenous and local knowledge can contribute to overcoming the combined challenges of climate change, food security, biodiversity conservation, and combating desertification and land degradation,”
  • an average of three people were killed per week defending their land in 2018, with more than half of them killed in Latin America.
  • the longer policymakers wait, the harder it will be to prevent a global crisis. “Acting now may avert or reduce risks and losses, and generate benefits to society,” the authors wrote. Waiting to cut emissions, on the other hand, risks “irreversible loss in land ecosystem functions and services required for food, health, habitable settlements and production.”
izzerios

Is Mexico the second-deadliest 'conflict zone' in the world? Probably not. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...zone-in-the-world-probably-not

shared by izzerios on 19 May 17 - No Cached
  • “Mexico was second-deadliest country in 2016″ and “Mexico Now World’s Deadliest Conflict Zone After Syria: Survey,”
  • The reports say that Syria had about 50,000 conflict deaths last year and that Mexico came in second with 23,000, followed by Afghanistan with 17,000.
  • Many homicides have nothing to do with organized crime. For example, men kill their intimate partners terrifyingly often. Yet these family violence deaths — and many others — are included in IISS’s figure of 23,000 conflict deaths for Mexico.
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  • Some sources suggest between one-third and one-half of Mexican homicides are connected to organized crime. That would give Mexico about 10,000 “conflict deaths,”
  • IISS classifies Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras as conflict zones because these countries’ criminal groups threaten state authority and control territory, and governments have moved against them with military responses
  • Civil conflicts usually end through either overwhelming military force or a negotiated political settlement. Neither seems likely for Mexico.
  • “large-scale organized crime” in Mexico does not qualify as civil war because the violent groups do not have political goals.
  • conflict scholars do not believe Mexico or the Central American countries above are immersed in civil conflict or civil war
  • counterinsurgency tactics (such as removing a leader) do not work against criminal groups, because criminals and insurgent or terrorist groups differ fundamentally
  • Targeting the leadership often reduces violence of insurgent or terrorist groups, but it tends to backfire against criminal groups, increasing violence
  • As a result, we could debate how to categorize it. But it is probably not in the same category as the open warfare in Syria and Afghanistan
  • If Brazil were included in the list — with its more than 50,000 violent deaths per year in recent years — it would rank higher than Syria
  • es, Mexico has a high number of violent deaths, but Mexico has a relatively large population of more than 120 million.
  • For this reason, scholars usually use per capita figures — not raw totals — when comparing homicide rates across countries. This seems to have been overlooked in the viral articles about “deadliest” countries
  • Organized crime groups, and sometimes government agents, have been wreaking havoc on the country’s people and institutions. IISS’s report should be commended for bringing much-needed attention
anonymous

Biden says "nothing has changed," but numbers of child migrants on record pace : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...crossing-border-at-higher-pace

shared by anonymous on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • President Biden claimed Thursday in his first press conference since taking office that "nothing has changed" compared to earlier influxes of migrants and unaccompanied children at the border.
  • The Biden administration has been grappling with surging numbers of migrants, especially children arriving at the border without their parents. It is true, as Biden states, that numbers often rise during the early months of the year when temperatures begin to warm. But the number of children arriving today without their parents is considerably higher than at the same time in 2019 and 2020.
  • In fact, the number of unaccompanied children being apprehended by the Border Patrol were higher in February than they've been any previous February since 2014, according to data shared with NPR by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
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  • Authorities encountered 9,297 children without a parent in February, a 30% increase from 2019 during the last major influx of unaccompanied children. To be sure, it's still below the peaks of 11,000 unaccompanied minors who arrived in May 2019 and above 10,000 in June 2014, but experts and administration officials expect those records to be broken this year.
  • Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week that U.S. agents are on pace to intercept more migrants on the southwest border in 2021 than they have in the last two decades.The reasons for the influx of migrants from Central America are vast and complex. They are also deeply personal for each family who chooses to leave their home.
  • Jessica Bolter, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, says they involve a mix of longstanding factors, such as poverty and corruption, as well as new factors such as two recent hurricanes and widespread unemployment due to the pandemic.
  • U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents apprehended an average of 5,000 undocumented immigrants per day over the past 30 days, including about 500 unaccompanied children, according to a senior Border Patrol official who spoke to reporters on Friday.
  • The official said the influx was "much different" than previous years, citing the large number of unaccompanied children and families traveling. As of Wednesday, more than 5,000 unaccompanied migrant children and teens were stuck in Border Patrol facilities waiting for beds in more appropriate shelters built for children, according to Department of Homeland Security data viewed by NPR.
  • The Border Patrol official told reporters Friday that agents are trying to discharge the children from warehouses and jail-like holding cells as quickly as possible, but there's a bottleneck because the government can't open child shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services fast enough to accommodate everyone who's crossing.
  • The Biden administration is working with other agencies trying find more bed space. They're using places like the San Diego Convention Center to hold unaccompanied minors so they're not sleeping in cells on the border. The challenges in Central America – and at the border – have become cyclical.
  • Like under previous presidents, the Biden administration was not prepared to shelter this many arriving children. But Bolter questions whether this is some kind of a new "crisis." She says this part of the same flow of migrants that the United States has been experiencing over the last decade.
  • Up until 2012, the vast majority of apprehensions at the southwest border were of young Mexican males coming across to find work in the United States. Two years later, the majority of cases coming across the southwest border were from Central America and were a mix people, families and unaccompanied children.
  • The Biden administration also has long term plans to deal more directly with these issues in Central America. They include developing more legal avenues to seek asylum so that migrants don't feel they have to choose illegal avenues. And Biden just sent three top officials to Mexico and Guatemala as part of efforts to tackle the root causes of migration, something he also just tasked Vice President Harris with leading.
  • He told NPR's Steve Inskeep Friday that the administration wants to help countries in the region create the right environment for international investment that drives economic prosperity, but also has ways to encourage better behavior from money launderers and other corrupt officials.
tsainten

Russia's Sputnik V expands reach in Latin America - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

US pandemic Vaccine

shared by tsainten on 12 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Russia's Sputnik V has seen rising popularity across Latin America as more countries announce shipments and deals to purchase the Covid-19 vaccine.
  • Nine Latin American countries so far have approved usage of the Sputnik V vaccine -- Argentina, Bolivia, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Venezuela. Distribution of the vaccine has also begun in Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Venezuela
  • As Russia struggles to keep up with demand, some countries have received only very small shipments. Bolivia received 20,000 Sputnik V doses in January, though it expects enough to eventually vaccinate 2.6 million people. Paraguay announced the purchase of one million doses, but has so far only received 4,000.
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  • The Sputnik V vaccine has a cheaper list price and can be stored at higher temperatures than the Pfizer vaccine, which has made it appealing to Latin American countries with less-developed economies and infrastructures. It requires two doses taken 21 days apart to be effective.
  • Russia has acknowledged the production squeeze and has considered launching regional production hubs in several countries, including Brazil, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
  • Experts have repeatedly voiced concern over transparency around Sputnik's testing and its accelerated authorization in Russia. However, the vaccine was found 91.6% effective against symptomatic Covid-19 and 100% effective against severe and moderate disease, in an interim analysis of the vaccine's Phase 3 trial results published in The Lancet.
martinelligi

Former President George W. Bush calls on Congress to tone down 'harsh rhetoric' about immigration - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

immigration politics gop

shared by martinelligi on 19 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Former President George W. Bush on Sunday called on Congress to tone down the "harsh rhetoric" on immigration, adding that he hopes that doing so will "set a tone that is more respectful" of immigrants and lead to more reform.
  • The plea from the former President comes amid a heated debate over immigration reform in Congress as the Biden administration grapples with the influx of migrants at the US-Mexico Border. It also follows his message in an op-ed published by the Washington Post on Friday, where he called for bipartisan action on several immigration measures.
  • He acknowledged Sunday one of the biggest disappointments of his presidency is that he did not pass any meaningful reform on the issue. Bush also said he is currently lobbying the Republican Party to act on creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, if they can pass a background check and pay back taxes but did not seem hopeful that his party will agree.
yehbru

Biden Assigns Kamala Harris Another Difficult Role: Protecting Voting Rights - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...kamala-voting-rights.html

US Politics Biden Harris Voting Rights

shared by yehbru on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • President Biden said on Tuesday that he had directed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead Democrats in a sweeping legislative effort to protect voting rights
  • Mr. Biden told the crowd that he saw the protection of voting rights as one of the most fundamental — and most endangered — pathways to ensure racial equity.
  • Ms. Harris has already been tasked with leading the administration’s efforts to deter migration to the southwestern border by working to improve conditions in the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
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  • Known as the “For the People Act,” the bill is the professed No. 1 priority of Democrats this year. It would overhaul the nation’s elections system, rein in campaign donations and limit partisan gerrymandering.
  • Her Northern Triangle work comes in addition to a host of other engagements, including but not limited to: selling the “American Rescue Plan,” advocating Mr. Biden’s infrastructure package, representing women in the work force, highlighting the Black maternal mortality rate, assisting small businesses, assessing water policy, promoting racial equity, combating vaccine hesitancy, and fighting for a policing overhaul.
  • One option for Democrats would be to ram the bill through on a partisan vote by further rolling back one of the foundations of Senate tradition: the filibuster
anonymous

U.S. Lays Out Plans For How It Will Share Surplus COVID-19 Vaccines Abroad : Coronavirus Updates : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...rplus-covid-19-vaccines-abroad

shared by anonymous on 03 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • The United States will send its first shipments of surplus COVID-19 vaccine doses abroad on Thursday, spelling out for the first time how it will share its wealth of vaccines with parts of the world struggling to get shots in arms.
  • The Biden administration has previously said it would share 80 million doses by the end of June. "We know that won't be sufficient,"
  • We expect a regular cadence of shipments around the world across the next several weeks. And in the weeks ahead, working with the world's democracies we will coordinate a multilateral effort, including the G-7 to combat and end the pandemic," Zients said.
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  • The U.S. has contracts for hundreds of millions more vaccine doses than it could possibly use — and this is a major move by the Biden administration to attempt to exert global leadership after months of pressure from global health organizations.
  • The administration also removed contract ratings under the Defense Production Act that prioritized U.S. contracts for suppliers to AstraZeneca, Novavax and Sanofi — three vaccines not currently authorized for use in the United States.
  • The first priority for doses shared through COVAX will be Latin America and the Caribbean, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa, the White House said.
  • The remaining doses will go to countries that have made their case to the White House, including nations such as India that have seen surges in cases; places such as Gaza, which is grappling to rebuild from recent fighting; and neighboring countries such as Canada and Mexico, the White House said.
  • This won't be enough to end or reduce the life span of the pandemic. And that's why we're working with allies and partners to expand the production of vaccines and raw materials, including here at home,"
  • "We're not seeking to extract concessions. We're not extorting. We're not imposing conditions the way that other countries who are providing doses are doing."
  • In accordance with the administration's framework, the White House announced approximate allocations for the first 25 million doses that will ship:
  • Both Biden and Vice President Harris leave next week on their first official foreign trips and are expected to discuss the U.S. plans for vaccine distribution. Harris is set to travel to Guatemala and Mexico City starting on Sunday, and Biden leaves Wednesday for the U.K., Brussels and Geneva.
  • "It is time to have a global road map to vaccinate the world. That's what we hope will come out of the G-7 summit next week," Reynolds told NPR. "As long as this pandemic is raging anywhere around the world, Americans aren't safe, none of us are safe."
  • Tom Hart, acting CEO of the ONE Campaign, said he was disappointed that the Biden administration has not moved faster to ship 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which U.S. regulators have not yet authorized for emergency use."Less than 1 percent of COVID-19 vaccine doses globally have been administered to people in low-income countries," Hart said in a statement. "This is a once in a generation crisis, and as we approach the G7 next week, the world is looking to the US for global leadership and more ambition is needed."
rerobinson03

U.S. Covid Vaccine Donations Will Go to 'Wide Range' of Nations - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nations-coronavirus-biden.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 07 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • The White House, besieged with requests from other nations to share its supply of coronavirus vaccine, announced Thursday that it would distribute an initial 25 million doses this month across a “wide range of countries” in Latin America and the Caribbean, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa, as well as the Palestinian territories, war-ravaged Gaza and the West Bank.
  • Thursday’s announcement comes a week before Mr. Biden leaves for Cornwall, England, to meet with the heads of state of the Group of 7 industrialized nations, where the global vaccine supply is certain to be a topic of discussion. Officials said the Biden administration would donate additional doses throughout the summer as they become available.
  • Some African nations have less than 1 percent of their populations partly vaccinated, according to data from the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford, and the percentages of vaccinated people in Honduras and Guatemala are around 3 percent of the population.
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  • Mr. Biden’s pledge to donate 80 million doses this month involves vaccines made by four manufacturers. Besides AstraZeneca, they are Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, the last three of which have received U.S. emergency authorization for their vaccines.
  • The president has described the vaccine donations as part of an “entirely new effort” to increase vaccine supplies and vastly expand manufacturing capacity, most of it in the United States. To further broaden supply, Mr. Biden recently announced he would support waiving intellectual property protections for coronavirus vaccines. He also put Mr. Zients in charge of developing a global vaccine strategy.
rerobinson03

U.S. Aid to Central America Hasn't Slowed Migration. Can Kamala Harris? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...a-migration-kamala-harris.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 07 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Pedro Aguilar, a coffee farmer who hadn’t asked for the training and didn’t see how it would keep anyone from heading for the border, looked confused. Eyeing the U.S. government logo on the pamphlet, he began waving it around, asking if anyone had a phone number to call the Americans “and tell them what our needs really are.”
  • That is the stark reality facing Ms. Harris as she assumes responsibility for expanding the same kind of aid programs that have struggled to stem migration in the past. It is a challenge that initially frustrated her top political aides, some of whom viewed the assignment from Mr. Biden as one that would inevitably set her up for failure in the first months of her tenure.
  • Her allies worried that she would be expected to solve the entire immigration crisis, irked that the early reports of her new duties appeared to hold her responsible for juggling the recent surge of children crossing the border without adults.Ms. Harris, who has little foreign policy experience and no history in the region, has already been criticized for not visiting the border.
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  • Even so, Ms. Harris and her advisers have warmed to the task, according to several people familiar with her thinking in the White House. They say it will give her a chance to dive squarely into foreign policy and prove that she can pass the commander-in-chief test, negotiating with world leaders on a global stage to confront one of America’s most intractable issues.
  • Foreign aid is often a difficult, and at times flawed, tool for achieving American interests abroad, but it’s unclear whether there are any simple alternatives for the Biden administration.
  • From 2016 to 2020, 80 percent of the American-financed development projects in Central America were entrusted to American contractors, according to data provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The upside is that these companies have big offices capable of meeting the strict oversight requirements involved in handling millions of taxpayer dollars. The downside, critics say, is that a lot of the money disappears into those bureaucracies instead of reaching the people they’re trying to help.
  • One, called the Rural Value Chains Project, spent part of its $20 million in American aid building outhouses for potato farmers — many of which were quickly abandoned or torn apart for scrap metal.
  • Then, it seemed that everyone Ms. Monzón knew had left the area, spread across a mountain range where coffee fields bask in a perfect mix of sun and rain. On clear days, you can see Mexico from the dirt road that snakes through town.Ms. Monzón’s husband was already in the United States, and her son, then 14, begged her to take him there. When she wouldn’t, he left on his own and, his mother said, made it safely across the border.
  • The Obama administration tackled the dicey politics of immigration in part by removing undocumented workers, earning the president the nickname “deporter in chief” from critics. But he also oversaw an infusion of new aid money that would, in theory, make countries like Guatemala more bearable for the poor. Mr. Biden was tapped to help disburse $750 million to the region.Since then, at least three programs that won more than $100 million in U.S. funding in all have come to San Antonio Huista, hoping to make life better.
  • The farmers of San Antonio Huista say they know quite well what will keep their children from migrating. Right now, the vast majority of people here make their money by selling green, unprocessed coffee beans to a few giant Guatemalan companies. This is a fine way to put food on the table — assuming the weather cooperates — but it doesn’t offer much more than subsistence living.
anonymous

Deaths Of Migrant Children Haunt Former Official As Border Surge Increases : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...cial-as-border-surge-increases

shared by anonymous on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Seeing the growing number of minors held in jail-like facilities near the U.S.-Mexico border, John Sanders can't help thinking of Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez.
  • Hernandez died of complications from the flu. So did Felipe Gomez Alonzo, 8, another child whom Sanders thinks about a lot. Jakelin Caal, 7, died of a bacterial infection.Sanders said kids who arrive at the border facilities are already physically and emotionally strained after weeks — if not months — of traveling under very difficult conditions.
  • At least five children died in custody or after being detained by federal immigration agents at the border during that surge in 2018 and 2019, when as many as 2,600 children were being held in border facilities.
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  • The U.S. government had more than 4,200 unaccompanied migrant children in its custody as of Sunday, according to a Department of Homeland Security document obtained by NPR.
  • The children are spending an average of 117 hours in detention facilities before being moved to more hospitable shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services — far longer than the 72 hours allowed by law.
  • The 16-year-old boy from Guatemala died in the care of U.S. Customs and Border Protection during the last record-breaking detention of unaccompanied minors during the Trump administration, when Sanders led the agency
  • Back in 2019, Long served as a detention monitor for the legal team that advocated for the children in court. She testified to Congress at the time about sick kids sleeping in cells and older children caring for younger ones.
  • She largely blames the Trump administration for hollowing out what little infrastructure existed to handle these cyclical flows of unaccompanied minors.But Long also raises concerns about transparency in President Biden's administration and questions why detention monitors like herself have been blocked from seeing certain areas of concerning facilities.
  • David Lapan, a former senior official in Trump's Department of Homeland Security, said the former president was more focused on sending a message about enforcement than caring for the children.
  • Sanders, the former acting CBP commissioner, quit the Trump administration in the midst of the last border crisis.He described the deaths of children on his watch as a transformational experience and now works with an organization, Glasswing International, that works to address the root causes of migration in Central America.
ethanshilling

US to Send Millions of Covid-19 Vaccine Doses to Mexico and Canada - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...exico-vaccine-coronavirus.html

Policy mexico canada pandemic

shared by ethanshilling on 18 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The United States plans to send millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Mexico and Canada, the White House said Thursday, a notable step into vaccine diplomacy just as the Biden administration is quietly pressing Mexico to curb the stream of migrants coming to the border.
  • Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said the United States was planning to share 2.5 million doses of the vaccine with Mexico and 1.5 million with Canada, adding that it was “not finalized yet, but that is our aim.”
  • Tens of millions of doses of the vaccine have been sitting in American manufacturing sites. While their use has already been approved in dozens of countries, including Mexico and Canada, the vaccine has not yet been authorized by American regulators.
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  • Mr. Biden asked President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico in a video call this month whether more could be done to help solve the problem, according to Mexican officials and another person briefed on the conversation.
  • Mexican officials acknowledge that relations between the United States and Mexico, which has suffered one of the world’s deadliest coronavirus epidemics, would be buoyed by a shipment of doses south.
  • Several European countries suspended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine this week, a precaution because some people who had received the shot later developed blood clots and severe bleeding.
  • Until Thursday, all of Canada’s vaccine supply had come from Europe or India, and Canada’s roll out has proceeded at a slow pace compared with the United States and many other countries.
  • A Biden administration official declined to comment further on the negotiations with Mexico, but noted that both countries shared a common goal of reducing migration by addressing its root causes, and said they were working closely to stem the flow of people streaming to the border.
  • But on Thursday, Europe’s drug regulator declared the vaccine safe. AstraZeneca has also said that a review of 17 million people who received the vaccine found they were less likely than others to develop dangerous clots.
  • The Biden administration’s appeal to do more against migration has put Mexico in a difficult position. While Mr. Trump strong-armed Mexico into militarizing the border, some Mexican officials argue that his harsh policies may have at times helped lessen their load by deterring migrants from attempting to make the journey north.
  • Many Canadians have expressed dismay that the United States had not shared any supplies with Canada, where no coronavirus vaccines are manufactured.
  • Mexico has agreed to increase its presence on its southern border with Guatemala to deter migration from Central America, one of the government officials said,
  • Beijing is shipping vaccines to dozens of countries, including some in Africa and Latin America. Russia has supplied its vaccine to Hungary and Slovakia.
  • Local government officials in Ciudad Juárez and shelter operators say Mexico is dialing up operations to capture and deport migrants along the northern border.
  • Despite the very public tensions with Mexico under Mr. Trump, Mr. López Obrador has been wary of the Biden administration, concerned that it might be more willing to interfere on domestic issues like labor rights or the environment.
  • The need for vaccines in Mexico is clear. About 200,000 people have died in the country from the virus — the third highest death toll in the world — and it has been relatively slow to vaccinate its population.
  • “Mexico needs cooperation from the U.S. in getting its economy jump-started and getting vaccines to get out of the health crisis,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.
kaylynfreeman

President Biden Faces Challenge From Surge of Migrants at the Border - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ation-mexico-border-biden.html

US Politics

shared by kaylynfreeman on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The president’s promise of a more humane policy is being tested as more unaccompanied children seek to enter the United States from Mexico.
  • WASHINGTON — Thousands of migrant children are backed up in United States detention facilities along the border with Mexico, part of a surge of immigration from Central Americans fleeing poverty and violence that could overwhelm President Biden’s attempt to create a more humane approach to those seeking entry into the country.
  • The growing number of unaccompanied children is just one element of an escalating problem at the border. Border agents encountered a migrant at the border about 78,000 times in January — more than double the rate at the same time a year ago and higher than in any January in a decade.
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  • The situation resembles the huge wave of migrant children that filled detention centers in 2014 that preceded the harsh crackdown imposed by President Donald J. Trump. Seven years ago, Mr. Biden, the vice president at the time, traveled to Guatemala and declared that “the current situation is untenable and unsustainable.”
  • But his approach — to broadly reopen the nation’s borders to vulnerable children with what he hopes will be a welcoming contrast to Mr. Trump’s erection of legal and physical barriers — is already at risk from the grim realities of migration patterns that have roiled the globe for years. Sensing a change in tone and approach after Mr. Trump’s defeat, migrants are once again fleeing poverty, violence and the devastation left by hurricanes and heading north toward the United States.
  • For now, Mr. Biden has broken from his predecessor in not applying the pandemic emergency rule to children, meaning the United States is still responsible for caring for them until they are placed with a sponsor.
  • The Health and Human Services Department said in a statement that the number of children in its custody was constantly changing. The Homeland Security Department did not respond to requests for comment.
  • Mr. Biden, briefed on the issue last week, deployed his top administration officials to tour the facilities at the border this weekend. The administration has made disaster aid funding available to border communities, has redirected agents from the northern border to the southern border and is considering a pilot program that would place health officials at border facilities to speed up children’s search for a sponsor.
  • Some families are being released into the United States. Border agents have not been able to turn away migrant families in South Texas because of a change in Mexican law that bans the detention of small children.
  • Liberal politicians are denouncing the expansion of detention facilities and railing against the continued imposition of Trump-era rules intended to prevent the spread of the coronavirus from immigrants. And advocates for families separated at the border during Mr. Trump’s administration are pressuring the president to move faster to reunite them.
  • The number of migrant children in custody along the border has tripled in the past two weeks to more than 3,250, according to federal immigration agency documents obtained by The New York Times, and many of them are being held in jail-like facilities for longer than the three days allowed by law.
  • And Republicans are already signaling that they plan to put the consequences of Mr. Biden’s immigration agenda at the center of their efforts to retake Congress in 2022.
ethanshilling

Devastation from Storms Fuels Migration in Honduras - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-honduras-central-america.html

world biden crisis

shared by ethanshilling on 06 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Children pry at the dirt with sticks, trying to dig out parts of homes that have sunk below ground. Their parents, unable to feed them, scavenge the rubble for remnants of roofs to sell for scrap metal.
  • But last month, apprehensions at the southwest border of the United States hit a 15-year high, part of a sharp uptick since Mr. Biden took office.
  • Then last fall, two hurricanes hit impoverished areas of Honduras in rapid succession, striking more than four million people across the nation — nearly half the population — and leveling entire neighborhoods.
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  • “People aren’t migrating; they’re fleeing,” said César Ramos, of the Mennonite Social Action Commission, a group providing aid to people affected by the storms. “These people have lost everything, even their hope.”
  • People have long left Honduras for the United States, fleeing gang violence, economic misery and the indifference of a government run by a president accused of ties to drug traffickers.
  • The majority of families and unaccompanied children are coming from Honduras and Guatemala, the two countries hit hardest by the hurricanes — a sign that the president’s more welcoming policies on immigration have drawn people at a time when they are especially desperate to leave.
  • Still, Mr. Biden has sent a clear message to anyone considering crossing the border in the meantime: “Don’t come over,” Mr. Biden said in a recent interview.
  • Mexico has begged the Biden administration to send more disaster relief aid to Central America. Mr. Biden has contended that under former President Trump, “instead of going down and helping in a major way” after the disasters, “we did nothing.”
  • “We need to be aggressively addressing the levels of despair that the folks hit by these storms are facing,” said Dan Restrepo, a former top adviser to President Obama. “We need to go big now and we need to be loud about it, because that starts actually factoring into the calculus that people face today, which is, ‘Can I survive here or not?’”
blythewallick

'Get Over It'? Why Political Influence in Foreign Policy Matters - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...-inquiry-foreign-meddling.html

politics US history trump policy GOP

shared by blythewallick on 21 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • A July 25 call between President Trump and the president of Ukraine is the basis for an impeachment inquiry into whether Mr. Trump withheld American military aid until Ukrainian officials investigated former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son, Hunter.
  • “Many countries are rivals of ours and of our democratic system,” Mr. Potter said. He listed as two chief examples China and Russia, countries that Mr. Trump has publicly suggested could help him achieve his political aims. “In some cases, they’re going to want policies that help them and therefore hurt us. In other cases, though, they just want us to fail.”
  • Are protections against this kind of thing in place? Yes. The ability of a foreign nation to gain access and influence over America’s democratic process has been a concern since the early days of the republic.
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  • Mr. Trump has denied any explicit quid pro quo — a favor or advantage granted or expected in return for something — in his call with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. He has repeatedly referred to it as a “perfect” conversation.
  • So what’s the problem?At its most basic level, asking another government for help — whether a quid pro quo existed or not — means that Mr. Trump would find himself indebted to another country.
  • Is this illegal?Asking a foreigner for aid in an American political campaign is illegal, which Ellen L. Weintraub, the head of the Federal Election Commission, has made clear.
  • Isn’t this business as usual?No. Both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations have resisted the idea of enlisting help from foreign powers for political advantage.
  • The Central Intelligence Agency helped overthrow elected leaders in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s and backed violent coups in several other countries in the 1960s. It plotted assassinations and supported brutal anti-Communist governments in Latin America, Africa and Asia. The C.I.A. has planted misinformation and, at times, used cash as a way to achieve foreign policy aims.
  • “We often consider ourselves and hold ourselves out as an example of how other countries should conduct themselves,” Mr. Potter said. “When we have internal battles or things have gone wrong here, it is much harder to do that.”
  • Has this happened in previous U.S. elections? Sort of.The only impeachment involving foreign policy came in the case of a senator, William Blount, who was accused in 1797 of scheming to transfer parts of Florida and the Louisiana Territory to Britain. The House impeached Blount, but he fled Washington. The Senate opted to expel him rather than convict him at trial.
  • remystewart on 21 Oct 19
     
    This article talks about Trump's call with the president of Ukraine which has become the basis of Trumps' impeachment inquiry. This article, talks about the White House chief of staff and how he is investigating the theory that it was Ukraine not Russia who hacked the Democratic Party emails in 2016 which would show that Trump was elected in 2016 without the help of Russia. The Cheif of Staff speaks on how there will always be a big political influence on foreign policy. The negatives of other countries getting involved in our elections start on the basis of other countries' ideals and morals compared to ours. The author, Katie Rogers, states that this has "sort of" happened before in the US but not to this extent. She believes that we as a country need to put a lot of effort into political influence on foreign policy before the next election.
anniina03

A Hunger Strike in ICE Detention | The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...hunger-strike-in-ice-detention

politics US history Crisis

shared by anniina03 on 17 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • n June of 2018, Ajay Kumar, a thirty-two-year-old farmer with a thick beard and a soft voice, left Haryana, a state in northern India. He told me that political opponents had been intimidating him for being a loud and persistent activist and that they had eventually forced him to leave. His family pooled money, and he used it to fly to Ecuador, a country that he didn’t need a visa to enter. From there, he stole across the Colombian border, made his way through the rain forests of Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras, and crossed into Mexico. He lost clothes, money, and, at one point, his shoes. He worried that he would be killed by gangs, or that he would die of drowning or dehydration. “We never know how, what, when, where we will die,” he told me recently. Two months after he left India, Kumar reached the U.S.-Mexico border, near Otay Mesa, California, and turned himself in to Border Patrol.
  • Kumar was one of nearly nine thousand Indians apprehended along the southern border of the U.S. in 2018—a remarkable rise from the year before, when roughly three thousand were apprehended. A decade ago, there were only ninety-nine.
  • Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power, in 2014, there has been a rise in violence, threats, and intimidation against minorities and members of the political opposition in India. In the past few decades, the country’s economy has also undergone a rapid liberalization, and inequality has intensified.
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  • Over the past several months, the U.S. has been trying to stop Indian migrants before they even reach the border. Last week, Mexico deported more than three hundred Indian migrants who were waiting to cross into the U.S., under a deal with the Trump Administration to avoid tariffs on Mexican exports. In 2016, two anonymous ICE officials described to Buzzfeed the agency’s unofficial policy toward Indian asylum seekers: “Keep them out. If you catch them, detain them.”
  • When Kumar reached California, he spent a few days in a packed cell, and then he and other asylum seekers were put on buses and planes—with chains around their hands, feet, and stomach, “as if we were some criminals,” Kumar recalled
  • Kumar ended up in the Otero County Processing Center, an ICE facility managed by a private contractor, where he says his treatment worsened. The officers spoke to Kumar and other Indian asylum seekers in English and Spanish, and refused to provide translators (except when they filled out medical questionnaires), despite the fact that the migrants spoke only Punjabi and Hindi.
  • Force-feeding is painful and potentially harmful to patients, and organizations including the Red Cross, the American Medical Association, and the World Medical Association consider it medically unethical
  • But what made Kumar most upset was that he and the other migrants were subjected to “animal-like treatment”—foul language, aggression, and punitive responses to minor violations of the rules. “When they cursed at the Indians and treated them badly, I couldn’t stand seeing it, so I would speak out against them,” Kumar told me. “If I said something, they would put me in the SHU”—the Special Housing Unit, a euphemism for solitary confinement—“for fifteen days, ten days, by myself in a small room.” (ICE did not respond to my request for comment.)
  • Kumar and other Indian asylum seekers were vegetarian because of their religious beliefs, and the staff sometimes taunted them and made them wait until everyone else got food before they could eat.
  • In July, Kumar went on a hunger strike to protest his indefinite detention and looming deportation. “I decided if I am going to die, I’ll die here,” he told me. When the officers at Otero saw that Kumar had stopped eating and drinking, they sent him to solitary. A few days later, he could hear the officers putting others in SHU rooms near his. He couldn’t see or talk to them and only later learned that five other Indian men had also gone on hunger strike. He did not know what had sparked their protest, though the Otero staff considered him their ringleader, nonetheless. “I had one demand from the beginning,” he told me. “I just want my freedom. I didn’t ask for anything else.”
  • n mid-July, Kumar and three other hunger strikers were transferred to the El Paso Service Processing Center’s medical unit, in Texas, where Kumar was at times isolated from the others. ICE obtained a court authorization to force-feed them, a procedure that involves pushing a tube through a patient’s nose and down the esophagus. One of the migrants had just been treated for a nose infection, and, as ICE doctors placed the tube in his nostril, he began spitting blood and lost consciousness. According to Corchado, who also represented this detainee, the doctor administering the tubes told him, “End your hunger strike and we’ll stop this.” He ended the strike that night.
  • In March of this year, Kumar learned that an immigration judge had rejected his application for asylum, finding the evidence of persecution he had presented not credible, and had ordered his deportation. Kumar filed an appeal. While he waited, he requested to be released on bond, something he had been asking for since he was apprehended, but ICE refused. Though ICE uses punitive measures against detainees, people in immigration detention are officially being held for an administrative violation rather than for a criminal offense, which means that, except in special circumstances, there is no legal limit on how long they can be held.
  • In January, a group of Indian asylum seekers dubbed the “El Paso Nine” banded together in a collective hunger strike. A court gave authorization for them to be force-fed, but the feeding was stopped after two or three weeks in the face of mounting pressure from politicians, activists, and lawyers. Seven of the strikers were eventually deported, and two were released to await rulings on their cases. But forty-nine members of Congress signed a letter to the Department of Homeland Security demanding an investigation into the use of force-feeding by ICE.
  • Kumar was taken off the feeding tube after nearly a month and then persisted in his strike. His weight dropped, as did his blood pressure and heart rate. He started getting severe abdominal pains. “I was literally seeing him die in front of me,” Corchado told me.
  • On September 12th, the court allowed ICE to resume force-feeding Kumar. The judge wrote in his opinion that he couldn’t order ICE to release Kumar, but he scolded the government for not having given Kumar an independent doctor’s evaluation and for what the judge called its “penological” treatment of him.
  • At the end of his hunger strike, Kumar weighed a hundred and seven pounds. He left the El Paso facility on September 26th and is now staying with an immigration activist in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He is eating solid foods again, and gardening, and he recently enrolled in E.S.L. classes. But he can’t run like he used to, and he’s still regaining his vision after going partially blind from starvation. “I’m not fully recovered,” he told me, two weeks after his release. “There are some mental issues—I can’t remember everything. But I’m better than before.”
  • In September, the Board of Immigration Appeals agreed to remand Kumar’s asylum case back to the immigration judge, concluding that the initial ruling, which judged Kumar’s testimony to be not credible, was “clearly erroneous.” Kumar’s case will be heard again, in December, by the same judge. His odds are not great—more than forty-one per cent of Indian asylum seekers were ordered to be deported from the United States last year, and the percentage is likely to be even higher this year.
aleija

Opinion | Biden Can Fix Latinos' Disappointment With Democrats - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...biden-promises-latinos.html

opinion US policy global immigration Politics

shared by aleija on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • For Joe Biden to make sure he gets more Latino votes than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 — for him to defeat President Trump and win the White House — he has to convince millions of Latinos that he won’t make the mistakes that Barack Obama made during his presidency. And he doesn’t have much time left to do it.
  • More than three million immigrants, many without criminal records, were deported during the Obama administration.
  • Nor should he back the prison system that has been locking immigrants and their children behind bars. During an interview with Mr. Biden in February, I showed him a photo of an 8-year-old boy from Honduras inside what looked like a metal cage in a detention center in McAllen, Texas. It was taken not during the Trump administration, but in 2014. These inhumane practices must stop.
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  • The big promise that Democrats failed to keep was the passage of an immigration reform bill that would legalize the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
  • Latinos haven’t forgotten Mr. Obama’s promise. That’s why Democrats have a “Latino problem.”
  • Now it falls to Mr. Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, to overcome this lack of trust within the Latino community. “I think it was a big mistake,” Mr. Biden said of the Obama administration’s mass deportations during our interview. “It took too long to get it right.”
  • Mr. Biden’s second promise is specifically for Dreamers. “I will also legalize Dreamers again,” he said during our February interview, “making sure they are not deported. These are already Americans.”
  • Mr. Trump’s policies have had a profound effect on immigration: From 2016 to 2019, annual net immigration to the United States fell by almost half, to about 600,000 migrants per year.
  • It’s possible that Mr. Biden’s policies could send the wrong message to people in the Southern Hemisphere. So, in order to discourage new caravans of people from traveling to the United States from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, Mr. Biden has said he plans to invest $4 billion to create jobs in Central America and tackle the root causes of migration.
mattrenz16

News: U.S. and World News Headlines : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-church-watch-election-closely

shared by mattrenz16 on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Among those anxiously watching the U.S. presidential election is a Guatemalan mother and her teenaged son who have taken refuge in a church in Austin, Texas, for the entirety of Donald Trump's presidency.
  • Hilda and Iván Ramirez are ensconced in the Sunday school wing of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, which has given them sanctuary from deportation for more than four and a half years.
  • As Election Day approaches, millions of immigrants like Ramirez are looking to Joe Biden as a savior if he gets in the White House.
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  • "It's hard to have two fears," says Ramirez, sitting in the parish hall of the suburban church in north Austin. "I'm afraid they'll separate me from my son, that immigration agents will come at any minute.
  • Biden pledges to reverse Trump's harsh immigration restrictions and reenact more lenient Obama-era policies, such as restoring the asylum process and creating a path to citizenship for unauthorized migrants already in the U.S. Biden's extensive immigration rollback runs to 22 pages.
  • Ramirez says they fled Ivan's abusive grandfather in the Mayan highlands of Guatemala five years ago, made it to the Texas border, and asked for asylum from the Obama/Biden administration. When her asylum request was denied, they fled to the safety of the church rather than let ICE remove them.
  • "If I could vote I would prefer Joe Biden," she says, "because, though he has deported lots of people, he was never as bad as Donald Trump, who has divided mothers from their children."
    • mattrenz16
      mattrenz16 on 03 Nov 20
       
      "If I could vote I would prefer Joe Biden," she says, "because, though he has deported lots of people, he was never as bad as Donald Trump, who has divided mothers from their children."
  • In her hopes for a Biden victory, Ramirez is articulating the aspirations of some 50 immigrants who have taken sanctuary in churches across the country and are publicly fighting their removal orders. And there are millions more.
    • mattrenz16
      mattrenz16 on 03 Nov 20
       
      In her hopes for a Biden victory, Ramirez is articulating the aspirations of some 50 immigrants who have taken sanctuary in churches across the country and are publicly fighting their removal orders. And there are millions more.
  • The list expecting relief from a Biden admnistration includes 11 million migrants who are living in the U.S. illegally, thousands of asylum-seekers waiting in dangerous Mexican border cities for their cases to be heard, and thousands more DACA recipients, plus their parents and siblings. DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program started under Obama that gives temporary protection from deportation to immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
    • mattrenz16
      mattrenz16 on 03 Nov 20
       
      The list expecting relief from a Biden admnistration includes 11 million migrants who are living in the U.S. illegally, thousands of asylum-seekers waiting in dangerous Mexican border cities for their cases to be heard, and thousands more DACA recipients, plus their parents and siblings. DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program started under Obama that gives temporary protection from deportation to immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
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