Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

he current turmoil over immigration conflates several separate issues. One is DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has provided temporary work permits and reprieves from deportation for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. These are the so-called Dreamers, who number about 800,000.

A third issue is the future of the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants who have come to the United States over decades and have effectively integrated into American life. The Trump administration has ordered a broad immigration crackdown against them.

Donald Trump is by no means America’s first racist president. But he ran a campaign explicitly rooted in bigotry, exclusion and white resentment. To his die-hard but ever-shrinking base, comments like those he made Thursday only reaffirm his solidarity with the cause. The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, certainly saw it this way. “This is encouraging and refreshing, as it indicates Trump is more or less on the same page as us with regards to race and immigration,” the site wrote in a post.

Mr. Trump has made clear that he has no useful answers on immigration. It’s up to Congress to fashion long-term, humane solutions. A comprehensive immigration bill that resolves all these issues would be best. But if that is not possible, given the resistance of hard-core anti-immigration activists in Congress, legislators should at least join forces to protect the Dreamers, Salvadorans, Haitians and others threatened by the administration’s cruel and chaotic actions.

What is just as important is what is not included. The so-called “comprehensive immigration reform” which was several times pushed and failed over the last decade had two basic pillars: new security and impediments to illegal immigration and some settlement for the more than 10 million undocumented immigrants who are already in the country and in many cases have been here for years or even decades. “DACA” was one portion of that larger whole – what we might call the most “deserving” subsection the 10 to 12 million: undocumented immigrants who came too young to have any choice in the matter and knew no other country than the US, despite not being citizens.

Trump’s pillars don’t explicitly say these 10 to 12 million people must all be deported. But that’s the upshot.

Trump is on record for mass deportation and he’s shown for a year that he is as good as his word. We don’t need to guess. Mass deportation is already the policy and practice.

So we’ve gone from border security in exchange for a path to citizenship (Bush and Obama-era comprehensive reform) to the Wall, mass deportation and a dramatic reduction and whitening of legal immigration. Non-deportation of ‘Dreamers’ is now the apparent ‘compromise’ point. But even that seems highly dubious.

My own evolving take is that Democrats should be willing to go along with some version of the wall in exchange for a protection and a path to citizenship for Dreamers. Walls, frankly, can be torn down. It’s a huge waste of money. But walls can be torn down. And the money budgeted this year can be taken back next year. It will take years even to get started. It is a huge mistake and waste of money. But protections for almost a million American young people (de facto not de jure) is worth it

We should be focusing on Trump’s broader plan, to try to cut America off to immigrants in general and make a last stand for America as a white man’s country.

there are policy and human-rights implications to what the president says and does. Dehumanizing rhetoric is a powerful real-world tool, especially when it’s coming from the president of the United States.

As with his remarks on Wednesday, it’s unclear whether Trump was referring specifically to gang members or to undocumented immigrants as a whole. This ambiguity could perhaps be chalked up to the president’s imprecise speech, but it’s connected to real policy. This unclarity is a key mechanism in the federal government’s targeting of immigrants across the country.

In 2017, ICE arrested and detained Daniel Ramirez Medina, a young undocumented immigrant who’d been shielded from deportation by enrolling in the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. ICE tried to strip him of his protected status and deport him, all because they claimed a tattoo of his birthplace proved his affiliation with a gang. According to criminal-justice and immigration advocates, the number of MS-13 arrests is inflated by these flimsy cases. In the Ramirez case, a federal judge criticized ICE for lying even in the court of law about Ramirez’s affiliation, saying the “agency [offered] no evidence to this Court to support its assertions.”

According to The Marshall Project, immigrants only have to meet some very loose criteria in order to fall into the gang dragnet, including hanging out where gang members usually frequent or being labeled as a gang member by a “reliable source,” such as a teacher.

the treatment of individuals caught up in the dragnet—from frigid detention centers to the separation of mothers from children—certainly still resembles what might be reserved for animals.

the combination of draconian rhetoric and the elision of nuance between real and perceived criminal elements is a crux of how racism has worked for centuries in this country and around the world.

“superpredator” originates as a zoological term for apex predatory animals—to mobilize massive public support for new criminal-justice policies and provide a moral high ground to marginalize any opponents.

any reasonable assessment of mass incarceration in black America will show that the damage has long been done. In Illinois, for example, over 80 percent of juveniles sentenced to life without parole under the superpredator dragnet were minorities. Driven to bloodlust against an ill-defined population of black youths made to be less than human, America strained against the Constitution and the basic precepts of human rights to stamp out a threat—based on a theory that has since been discredited.

The true peril of Trump’s comments on Wednesday is this: that the state will be further empowered to suspend human rights.

Dehumanization is not just a buzzword, but a descriptor of a specific and well-known psychological and sociological process, by which people are conditioned to accept inflicting increasingly inhumane conditions and punishments on other people

dehumanization means both a broadening of what’s acceptable and just who is unacceptable.

The most likely outcome of Trump’s “animals” rhetoric isn’t a return to some mythological Pax Americana, as his supporters might suggest. Quite the opposite: It could fuel more informing on neighbors, more regular harassment for people of color, a deeper and wider dragnet, and an increased acceptance of brutality and extralegal practices. That’s what happens when people stop being people.

The deal would allow the roughly 700,000 people enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program to stay in the country after the program ends in early March.

We have made it clear: We are not giving up our fight to protect America’s dreamers from the cruelty of deportation.”

The protesters demanded “a clean bill” — meaning that the Dream Act would get an up-or-down vote on its own without any language regarding border security attached. They “demanded” that Pelosi show a commitment to protecting “all 11 million” undocumented immigrants believed to be in the country.

“The Democrats are the ones who stopped their assault on sanctuary cities, stopped the wall, the increased deportations in our last bill that was at the end of April, and we are determined to get Republican votes to pass the clean DREAM Act,” she said. “Is it possible to pass a bill without some border security? Well, we’ll have to see. We didn’t agree to anything in that regard, except to listen and something that deals with technology or something like that – but nothing like a wall.”

There was “indignation and incredulity” expressed by the members of the Court. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy told the lawyer, “Your argument is demeaning the priceless value of citizenship.” Roberts put it simply. If the administration has its way, he said, “the government will have the opportunity to denaturalize anyone they want.”

EXILE FROM ONE’S HOME is historically considered one of the worst punishments the state could employ; it was, after all, one of the traditional Greek and Roman punishments for murder, their alternative to the death penalty

To drag someone out of the life they have painstakingly created over many years, for something as petty as traffic violations or shoplifting, is a gross violation of the proportionality principle — that the punishment should fit the crime.

Human rights by their nature apply to both citizens and noncitizens alike. It is difficult to see why deportation for such violations is not also a human rights violation. How, then, have so many of us accepted these policies so at odds with our American values?

The word “criminal” has a literal meaning, of course, but it also has a resonant meaning — people who by their nature are insensitive to society’s norms, drawn to violate the law by self-interest or malice. We do not generally use the term to describe those who may have inadvertently broken a law

Someone who runs to catch a bus is not necessarily a runner; someone who commits a crime is not necessarily a criminal.

Politicians who describe people as “criminals” are imputing to them permanent character traits that are frightening to most people, while simultaneously positioning themselves as our protectors

Deliberately obscuring the crucial distinction between someone who violates a law and someone whose character leads them to repeatedly commit serious crimes is an effective strategy for masking gross injustice.

Our current administration is vigorously employing that strategy, and history suggests that it is rarely constrained to just one group. If we look away when the state brands someone a criminal, who among us then remains safe?

The decision represents a dramatic shift in policy from the previous administration, which withstood bipartisan calls to grant the protections to Venezuelans.

Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based Democratic political strategist and pollster, said granting TPS to Venezuelans could open up a new relationship for Biden with an electorate that largely supported Trump in 2020.

Temporary Protected Status is granted to those from countries ravaged by natural disasters or war, allowing them to live and work in the United States until conditions improve back home.

"Venezuela is a failed state in every single measure," he said. "There's simply not enough food to go around. Hospitals had collapsed before the pandemic. You have a repressive dictatorship and extraordinary levels of violence in the street. You have pro-government militias attacking protesters. It's just inhumane to send people back into those conditions."

Hunger is stronger than fear.

Undocumented immigrants contribute more than $11 billion a year in state and local taxes. Immigrants are an essential part of our multiethnic, multicultural society.

But before the Biden administration can address the challenge of new migrant caravans heading north, it will have to deal with the tens of thousands of asylum seekers, mostly Central Americans, already stranded in Mexico along the U.S. border.

If he wants to be the anti-Trump president, Mr. Biden will have to resolve this situation promptly and humanely.

The administration has a long list of promises to fulfill in its first 100 days, from legalizing America’s approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants and protecting Dreamers to granting temporary protected status to the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States who escaped Nicolás Maduro’s regime.

As long as there aren’t enough Covid-19 vaccines for everyone, it’s unlikely the Biden administration will allow a massive influx of refugees and asylum seekers into the country. These months of vaccine scarcity will hopefully provide the administration the time it needs to formulate and execute a new immigration policy that can address the crisis.

They’ll also have to deal with the unauthorized immigrants who have been in the United States for decades, waiting for their status to be regularized.

Good leaders are defined by how they treat the most vulnerable in their charge, not the wealthiest or most powerful. And immigrants are, by far, the most vulnerable.

Since July, the campaigns have been spending more on Florida’s airwaves than anywhere else in the country.

Michael R. Bloomberg has pledged to spend $100 million

Florida television screens are increasingly the primary method, along with digital advertising

the campaign has more than two dozen unique on-air advertisements in different markets around the state over the past week.

He spent about $600,000 on one ad over the past week

Recent polls have shown Mr. Biden maintaining a slight lead over Mr. Trump — a Monmouth University poll had Mr. Biden at 50 percent with likely voters to Mr. Trump’s 45 on Tuesday

The Biden campaign is also clearly concerned about maintaining its lead over Mr. Trump among Latino voters

directly rebut attacks by Mr. Trump — evidence of a concern about the effectiveness of the president’s accusations — and even embrace some of Mr. Biden’s more progressive policies

two key groups in the state: seniors and Latino voters

Trump campaign falsely portrays Mr. Biden as a candidate who wants to cut Social Security

he ad also demonizes undocumented immigrants, claiming without evidence that a President Biden would take away Social Security from American citizens and give it to undocumented immigrants

But it hasn’t necessarily damaged his support among Latino voters in Florida

Voting begins in Florida with the distribution of absentee ballots on Sept. 24.

He and his supporters shouldn’t feel defeated after Super Tuesday. They should take a bow.

In the context of previous presidential elections, Biden isn’t so very moderate. Nor are Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg or other Democratic aspirants lumped in that category. They have carved out positions to the left of the party’s nominees over the past two decades, including the most recent three: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Kerry.

And you know who gets the most credit for that? Sanders.

While Sanders’s fellow candidates didn’t parrot his vocabulary and denounce “oligarchs” and “oligarchy,” they spoke expansively about gross income inequality and the need to tackle it. That largely reflected how wealth had been concentrated over recent decades. But it owed something, too, to Sanders’s right and righteous demand that America have this conversation.

Biden’s proposed tax increases of about $3.4 trillion over a decade are more than double what Clinton was advocating in 2016, while Buttigieg’s were more than quadruple. How is that moderate?

Although there is scant evidence in recent elections that a Democrat running on Sanders’s platform can win anywhere but in decidedly blue districts and states, that platform colored the Democratic primary in a bold and indelible way. Candidates disrespected it at their peril.

Klobuchar asserted herself — and was frequently characterized as — a sort of common-sense centrist. But her actual positions and proposals told a different story. As my fellow Times Op-Ed columnist David Leonhardt recently wrote: “She wants to raise taxes on the rich, break up monopolies, vastly expand Medicare, fight climate change, admit more refugees, allow undocumented immigrants to become citizens, ban assault weapons and require universal background checks. A Klobuchar administration would probably be well to the left of the Obama administration.” It would be closer to Sanders territory.

“All the lead contenders are running on the most progressive agendas to ever dominate a Democratic primary,” wrote Vox’s Ezra Klein and Roge Karma late last year. They noted that this primary’s moderates would have been considered leftists in the recent past. “As a result,” they added, “if Biden or Buttigieg actually win the nomination, they will be running on the most progressive platform of any Democratic nominee in history.”

Biden was designated a moderate despite declaring that the Equality Act, which would offer sweeping federal protection against discrimination for L.G.B.T.Q. people, didn’t merely have his support; it would be his top legislative priority. He was designated a moderate despite being among the 10 candidates at a Democratic debate early on who all raised their hands when asked if they supported extending health care benefits to undocumented immigrants.

Sanders’s grilling was a long time coming. The wonder of most of the debates was how carefully his competitors tiptoed around him, acutely conscious of the moral force that he had come to wield in the party and the passion of his supporters, whom they didn’t want to alienate. He became the enemy that no Democrat wanted to have.

Biden’s backing extends well beyond corporations. His proposals demonstrate concern for those working families. And his goals echo Sanders’s goals, for one reason above all others. Sanders already won.

Removing undocumented immigrants from the count would most likely have the effect of shifting seats to states that are older, whiter and typically more Republican.

Mr. Trump ordered Wilbur Ross, the secretary of commerce, to provide him with two sets of numbers, one including unauthorized immigrants and the other not.

A three-judge panel of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that the new policy violated federal law. Two other courts have issued similar rulings, while one said the dispute was not ripe for consideration.

It concluded that the new policy made it less likely that undocumented immigrants and others would participate in the census, harming its accuracy.

On the core question in the case, the administration told the justices that the term “persons in each state” can be understood to require “a sovereign’s permission to remain within the jurisdiction.”

In a separate response, groups represented by the American Civil Liberties Union said the administration’s new policy violated the federal statute and the Constitution.

Staff on the frontlines say they are increasingly battling burnout after months of devastation and with a dark winter ahead. “I’ve seen younger people come in through the door, and be admitted right away to the ICU,”

It was frustrating that the public no longer seemed to be taking Covid protocols seriously, Santini said. “Every day we go to work, we’re putting our lives and our family’s lives on the line.”

“Even lower-risk activities now carry substantial risk because there is more virus out there than ever before. Simply put and bluntly put, we can’t get away with things that we’ve been able to get away with so far.”

Some restaurants have invested thousands in outdoor dining infrastructure they hoped would last them through the pandemic, only to see those facilities ordered to close.

the organization’s research has shown that 43% of restaurant owners are unsure whether their business will survive the next six months. “People who started out frustrated – today they are feeling just outright desperate.”

the latest Covid surge continues to shine a harsh light on inequality. California has seen record levels of unemployment and countless businesses have been shuttered for good, yet some sectors – notably the tech industry – have continued to rake in revenue.

post-pandemic, California could see a so-called “K-shaped recovery”, where the incomes of the highest earners continue to rise just as quickly as they plummet for those who are struggling.

Latinos in LA county, many of whom are working essential jobs, are also contracting the virus at more than double the rate of white residents. The toll in working-class neighborhoods has been especially devastating for undocumented people, who have been unable to access aid.

“We have the confluence of factors where people are facing financial instability, and feel like they have no choice but to work even if they get sick,” she said. “And particularly in California, we have a large population of undocumented people who have been demonized by the federal government and are especially vulnerable.”

Really, though, it's white men who are the ones rebelling against an economy that they feel like devalues their work, against a culture that they fear is devaluing their once-preeminent place in it, and against a mundane existence that devalues any kind of meaning.

Productivity growth stalled in the 1970s, and, at least in the United States, what economic growth there was overwhelmingly accrued to the top 1 percent in the 1980s and beyond. Part of this was due to Western workers having to compete with billions of Chinese, Indian, and Indonesian ones after the Berlin Wall came down. An even bigger part was good-paying jobs being automated into obsolescence. And the rest was policy—tax cuts for the rich, deunionization for the rest, and deregulation for Wall Street—which is why inflation-adjusted median incomes stagnated even more in the U.S. than in Europe

Trump supporters aren't any more likely to have come from places that have lost a lot of manufacturing jobs or have a lot of immigrants. The opposite, actually. Nor are they just people who are barely getting by. They tend to be a rung or two above that—decently middle class or more—who nonetheless might feel economically insecure because they haven't gotten a raise in a long time, and see everyone else around them doing even worse.

It's no surprise that these kind of economic grievances can ratchet up racial ones.

as Harvard economist Ben Friedman found in The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, "a rising standard of living for the clear majority of citizens more often than not fosters greater opportunity, tolerance of diversity, social mobility, commitment to fairness, and dedication to democracy." So a stagnant one can make people meaner, less generous, and more suspicious of people who don't sound, look, or worship like they do.

it's important to point out that a weak economy isn't necessary for this kind of backlash. Any time white people—and really white men—feel like their position in society is being challenged in any way, this has happened. Like it did, for example, even when the economy was booming during the civil rights movement.

The fact is that a lot of white people don't like being around minorities who haven't assimilated, and they don't want to assimilate to a culture where they'll soon be a minority themselves

even white liberals who aren't used to hearing Spanish in public became much more opposed to increased immigration and much less in favor of letting kids who were born here stay here if their parents were undocumented once they were exposed to Spanish-speakers during their morning commutes. Which seems to explain why, as the Wall Street Journal found, the counties that experienced the fastest minority growth between 2000 and today voted so heavily for Trump.

As researchers Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson found, all you have to do is remind them that the country is on track to being majority-minority to make them endorse these kind of racially conservative policies.

But it's not just minorities who white men are worried about. It's women too—or one woman in particular.

There's still a socially-accepted hostility to women being in charge, a fear that this would make a man not a man, and a feeling that women shouldn't even try to act like men. Researchers Tyler Okimoto and Victoria Brescall found that people experienced "moral outrage" when they were told that a hypothetical female politician was ambitious, but nothing when they were told a male was.

For a lot of people, there is no great cause, no great conflict, no great meaning to it all. The big battles have already been won, and now there are just bills to pay and weekends to look forward to.  The problem with this, Fukuyama wrote, is that "if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because the just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause."

it's something that his supporters don't seem to mind. Earlier this the year, 84 percent of them said that "what we need is a leader who will say or do anything to solve America's problems." Constitutional conservatism this is not.

It's not clear what is to be done. It's true that for almost 35 years now the liberal international order has failed to give rich world workers the rising standard of living they expect. Insofar as that was what was motivating Trump's supporters, we could redistribute more to try to make the economy work for everyone. But Europe already does that, and it hasn't stopped the rise of right-wing nationalists there.

But insofar as Trump's voters were really driven by a fear of a future where white men are no longer politically, economically, and culturally dominant, there's nothing we should do. Some things should not be accommodated

It's possible that 2016 will be our own 1914. Not that we'll descend into a paroxysm of suicidal violence, but that a world that was defined by openness might give way to one that's not.

For the last 70 years, liberal democracy has guaranteed people's individual rights, and the U.S. has guaranteed liberal democracy's right to exist. All of that is doubt now.

Whatever its flaws, the liberal international order gave us peace and prosperity on a scale heretofore unknown in human history. And perhaps in our future too.

He describes 9/11 as “a turning point for me.” He was by then hosting a show in New York, and remembers walking from Ground Zero to his studio and reading on air a 19th-century hymn written by a Mormon pioneer fleeing Missouri on his way to Utah. Beck says he felt a special calling at that moment. “If you have a position on the gate and you don’t warn the people of what you see,” he remembers thinking, “you’re to blame.”

In Doctrine and Covenants, a book of Mormon scripture, God says, “I have established the Constitution of this land by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose.” According to polling by David Campbell, a Notre Dame political scientist, 94 percent of American Mormons believe that the “Constitution and the Bill of Rights are divinely inspired.”

Mormons don’t just consider the Constitution sacred. They believe that its violation has allowed their persecution.

Today, many Mormons see defending the Constitution the way many Jews see opposing genocide: as a way of honoring their ancestors and affirming their identity.

Mormons tend not to accentuate these views publicly. Mormon culture, he told me, emphasizes a “moderate way of speaking.” Think Mitt Romney

The same doomsday sensibility that helps him appreciate the menace posed by Trump led him to massively exaggerate the menace posed by Obama—and thus to breed the hateful paranoia on which Trump now feeds. Beck, in fact, pioneered some of Trump’s most disturbing themes

during the first 14 months of the Obama administration, according to Dana Milbank’s book Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America, Beck and guests on his Fox News show invoked “fascism,” “Nazis,” “Hitler,” “the Holocaust” and “Joseph Goebbels” 487 times. For good measure, Beck in 2007 said that Hillary Clinton sounds like “the stereotypical bitch.”

Beck says he’s sorry for all that. “I played a role, unfortunately,” he told Megyn Kelly during a 2014 interview on Fox News, “in helping tear the country apart.” He told me that now that America has “hit the iceberg,” he wants to help it heal

Although still generally conservative, Beck now insists that America’s real moral divide isn’t between left and right. He recently angered some conservatives by sending aid to undocumented children detained at the Mexican border. In a New York Times op-ed this fall, he called on conservatives to show “empathy” for Black Lives Matter activists. He says Americans must stop thinking in terms of ideological sides

When Barack Obama rose to the presidency after insisting, “There is not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America,” Glenn Beck called him a racist. Now that Donald Trump is president, Beck wants to bind the country’s racial and ideological wounds. He really does.

But for years and years, he called sheep wolves. Now that the wolf is here, it may be too late

They could also further undercut his standing among women and minorities, who are strongly opposed to him in public-opinion polls.

Before Trump, she was also widely considered to be a leading pick as a potential 2016 vice-presidential candidate.

Martinez has criticized the way Trump describes illegal immigrants and decided not to attend his Albuquerque rally.

In a Wednesday news conference on Capitol Hill, Ryan declined to specifically address Trump’s attacks on Martinez but defended her record.

Trump and Ryan, for example, remain divided on one of the central pillars of the mogul’s campaign: immigration reform, specifically Trump’s call for mass deportation of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country.

Ryan’s six-part House agenda for next year — which he previewed during the news conference — also does not mention trade, another area where Trump holds positions dramatically different from the party’s pro-free-trade leadership.

Even so, Trump’s negatives are nearly matched with Clinton’s, and the poll showed that the two are caught in a statistical dead heat, with Trump at 46 percent and Clinton at 44 percent.

The poll also showed that Republican voters overall are warming to the mogul, with 85 percent now backing Trump.

What the argument for accommodation is missing is the core reality about Trump. His answer to nearly every problem is himself — his negotiating skill, his strength of purpose, his unique grasp of the national will.

He is offering himself as master of every situation. We are supposed to turn in desperation to the talent and will of one man, who happens to be bristling with prejudice and blazing with ignorance. We are seeing the offer of personal rule by someone with no discernible public or personal virtues.

He has offered disaffected people an invitation to political violence. “Knock the crap out of them, would you?” he said at one rally. “Seriously. Okay? Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise.”

And this permission for violence is paired with an embrace of ethnic and religious bigotry, casting blame and suspicion on Muslims and undocumented immigrants. It would be difficult — or should be difficult — for any Republican to endorse a presidential candidate whose election would cause many of our neighbors to fear for their safety. Or to embrace a candidate who promised to purposely target children in the conduct of the war on terrorism.

For Republicans, accommodation with Trump is not just a choice; it is a verdict. None will come away unstained. For evangelical Christians, it is the stain of hypocrisy — making their movement synonymous with exclusion and gullibility. For GOP job seekers, it is the stain of opportunism. (Consider the sad decline into sycophancy of Chris Christie.) For conservatives, it is the stain of betrayal — the equivalent of supporting George Wallace in 1968 as an authentic populist voice.

All this leaves completely horrible options: sitting the election out, supporting a third-party candidate, contemplating a difficult vote for Clinton. But these are the only honorable options.