nairiporter: (Default)
[personal profile] nairiporter
Since June 6 federal immigration raids in LA, including at day-labour sites and warehouse areas, have ignited widespread backlash. California immediately bristled at the sudden surge of federal enforcement in sanctuary jurisdictions.

Trump's escalatory move: in response to growing demonstrations, he authorised the deployment of around 2K National Guard troops and 700 Marines into LA, marking the first such federal override of a governor's objection in 6 decades. His administration defended it as necessary to "liberate" Los Angeles and protect federal agents and infrastructure.

The state pushback followed soon. Governor Gavin Newsom decried these actions as a power grab, filing suit and accusing Trump of "authoritarian overreach" that threatens civil liberties nationwide.

Read more... )
fridi: (Default)
[personal profile] fridi
Biden admits border is not secure amid funding fight

Since nobody seems to know exactly what is in this "immigration deal" really, and all the characterizations are heresy, I find it disingenuous of supporters of the Senate "deal" to withhold key details from the public. Perhaps they think they can calm the waters by being secretive but all they have done is cause more alarmism and polarization.

Till then it is reckless to assume it's "a good deal" or the "best deal" possible. And here are the possible elements that are certain to kill a potential "deal".

1) Amnesty for those who have illegally entered the US of their own volition. Been there, done that, solved nothing and gives another incentive for crashing the border.

2) A failure to substantially toughen requirements for granting asylum, and failure to provide border agents the power to expel those with dubious claims.

3) A failure to restrict parole to a case by case basis, as required in the the law.

4) Failure to provide expedited removal for the vast majority of illegals caught.

5) Any further requirements by Democrats to expand immigration - not the time or relevancy to immediate border security.

Now the House Republicans are strongly pressing for full adoption of HR2. That isn't realistic, but what is certain is that even the House Ukraine supporting Republicans cannot and will not allow for the absence of substantial changes in the areas cited above.
fridi: (Default)
[personal profile] fridi
Everything politicians tell you about immigration is wrong. This is how it actually works
"Escaping poverty, violence and the climate crisis are factors, but the main driver is rich societies demanding cheap labour"

I don’t know what the point of the article is.

“Do we want a large agricultural sector that partly relies on subsidies and is dependent on migrants for the necessary labour?”

Unequivocally, yes! Governments use subsidies to incentivize overproduction to keep consumer prices low. Additionally, farming is expensive and most farms operate on a system of revolving debt. Many are one bad harvest away from going tits up. The subsidies also provide some stability.

People can sit around all day fantasizing about their personal utopia but the reality is the system we have is the system we need to ensure food is available all the time and at low cost. But none of that means we have to tolerate illegal immigration.

Legal immigration is good. Legal immigration could be increased if we could stop the illegal immigration.
fridi: (Default)
[personal profile] fridi

We've come to a point that even warning shots can be heard on the Polish-Belarusian border. That's hardly a surprise, given the fact that young soldiers patrol that line who've sworn to guard their homeland at all costs. However, these occasional shots on the border between two bristling states can very quickly ignite a real firestorm. This conflict has brought both Europe's weaknesses on display and the cynical thirst for political supremacy not only of Russia and Belarus on one side, but also Poland, a EU member.

Read more... )
fridi: (Default)
[personal profile] fridi
Bernie Sanders wants to revamp trade deals, labor protections as part of sweeping immigration plan

And, while I would take any article on a Democrat presidential candidate published by Fox News with a huge (truckload) grain of salt,

Sanders' immigration plan: Halt deportations, abolish ICE, welcome 50K 'climate migrants,' give welfare to all
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I like most of Sanders's plan, but these 3 items are going to be problems for him. The first 2 are just issues of messaging, but Democrats are notoriously incompetent with messaging.

Conservatives make decriminalization sound like legalization. Sanders doesn't want to legalize illegal immigration. He wants to make it a civil offense rather than a criminal offense.

Conservatives make it sound like the Democrats want to stop enforcing immigration and customs laws altogether. Sanders doesn't want to just abolish ICE and CBP. He wants to restructure them outside of DHS.

The third item is a bigger problem. I can't think of any good messaging myself that is going to enthuse Americans about providing welfare and other government benefits to all immigrants regardless of their status. Good luck with that one, Bernie.

Again, since FOX is not exactly the most reliable source on Democrats, I've provided another source at the top for those who, like me, are dubious of FOX. I'm happy to say that if you read both articles objectively, they say about the same thing.
luzribeiro: (Default)
[personal profile] luzribeiro
The Trump administration tries to erase the 'huddled masses'

Ken Cuccinelli tried to rewrite the gracious poem on base of the Statue of Liberty Tuesday, telling NPR that a new regulation under President Donald Trump would make immigrants more self-sufficient.
"Would you also agree that Emma Lazarus's words etched on the Statue of Liberty, 'Give me your tired, give me your poor,' are also a part of the American ethos?" NPR's Rachel Martin asked Cuccinelli on "Morning Edition" in an interview published Tuesday.
"They certainly are: 'Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge,'" he replied, altering the entire point of the poem.
It actually reads: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, Iift my lamp beside the golden door!"


Well, that just happened. This administration sees a political advantage to being openly hostile to American values. Those "huddled masses" are now an "invasion". Keep in mind these are legal immigrants. Some of whom are employed. Also, Trump knows this isn't even legal. It's just important for leaders with his despot personallity to make a public show of subjugating the people he so often demonizes.

Seems like just about everyone in this administration is an idiot. But yeah, he has to "play" to that hardcore base right?

The US should really just remove that plaque from the Statue of Liberty. It no longer applies.

nairiporter: (Default)
[personal profile] nairiporter
New study establishes causal link between climate, conflict, and migration
"IIASA-led research has established a causal link between climate, conflict, and migration for the first time, something which has been widely suggested in the media but for which scientific evidence is scarce."

In a nutshell, the effects of global climate change are not limited to just extreme and unusual natural disasters. The changing climate is also a factor for conflict and the resulting mass migration, including the one that has become a major problem for Europe in recent years.

The IIASA research is the one to ever draw a correlation between climate change and the intensifying conflicts and migration in regions severely affected by global warming. More specifically, the research points at climate change as being one of the reasons for the Arab Spring across the Maghreb and the Middle East.

Read more... )
luzribeiro: (Default)
[personal profile] luzribeiro
I do not understand how Conservatives can deny climate change. It doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me. You're so worried about unborn fetuses that you'd strip away a mother's autonomy, but you dont give a fuck about the world those fetuses will grow up in?

But then again, it's the ideology that says you're on your own, once you get out of the uterus.

Same thing about "bad hombres". If you're going to use a handful of crimes by undocumented immigrants as a reason for needing a wall, then you'd better use the 325+ mass shootings in America last year alone as a reason for needing proper gun control. And don't tell me the current one is "proper" because, quite obviously, it's not.

There's tons of logical discrepancies that I find in many of the GOP's current stances, but let's stick to those most glaring ones for now - or you could add more if you could be bothered to address them.
johnny9fingers: (Default)
[personal profile] johnny9fingers
We have this frankly bizarre piece of news:

www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/02/britons-more-sold-on-immigration-benefits-than-other-europeans

Wherein we find that:

"The YouGov–Cambridge Globalism survey found that 28% of Britons believed the benefits of immigration outweighed the costs, compared with 24% in Germany, 21% in France and 19% in Denmark. A further 20% of British people believed the costs and benefits were about equal, while 16% were not sure."

and

"In all, only 37% of Britons feel the costs of immigration outweigh the benefits – lower than in any other big European country apart from Poland. By comparison, 50% of Italians believe the net impact of immigration is negative, as well as 49% of Swedes and 42% of French and 40% of Germans.

The findings come weeks before the European parliament elections, where populist, anti-immigrant forces are projected to perform well across Europe
."

So if we in the UK are that divided, what is happening elsewhere? Is it actually worse? I mean, we are, by my own admission, the nation half of which is comprised of Brexiteers. Can this poll actually be representative of opinion in Europe, and not merely a delusional bandage to wrap around our own self-inflicted wounds? What is it like where you are?

I'm both sceptical and confused. How about you?

luzribeiro: (Default)
[personal profile] luzribeiro
This is a great post, so I will share it:

What Happened When a Trump Supporter Challenged Me About the Wall
I explained exactly why a wall won’t work, using conservative sources to prove it

It's clear that a wall can’t fix the immigration problem, but of course lots of people are still convinced that the solution has to be “a wall”, period.

The thing is, lots of walls and fences have been built over the last few decades in places where it was deemed most cost-effective to have such barriers. There probably are a few locations where more improvements can be made, but those are “minor tweeks” to the current situation, and they won't fix the problem as a whole.

One such example was listed in the above article (namely 8 miles of wall for $167M)

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2018-11-14/us-awards-second-border-wall-contract-in-texas

It's evident that a wall cannot bring matters to the next level of control on immigration. They're just  too expensive, and too easy to overcome in all sorts of ways. So what's the right step to the next level? There are lots of good ideas available for improving the immigration system. For example:

-- Focus on stopping the “demand side”:
- Set up a guest worker program that meets the needs of American industry.
- Set up an E-Verify program that can be trusted.
- Set up mandatory 1-year prison sentences for business personnel who hire illegal immigrants and illegal immigrants who bypass the system.
- Set up a path for guest workers to get green cards, and then citizenship, once strict requirements are met.
- Have the Border Patrol prepare a prioritized shopping list of technologies and personnel they need to effectively control the border.
- Sure, improvements to the border facilities would be needed. Depends on what the professionals feel would give “the most bang for the buck”.
- Approach Congress to have the needs of the Border Patrol met.

That sound realistic?
kiaa: (Default)
[personal profile] kiaa
I saw the moron child that calls himself "president" on TV this morning, allegedly giving a Christmas message. All he did was talk about his multibillion dollar medieval wall. But the commentators afterwards pointed out that only 37% of the people in the US wanted a wall across their border. Adding the caveat that Mexico will not pay for it, that drops to 33%. And, like a stubborn 3 year old, Trump still wants to build his wall.

As far as walls and borders are concerned, I wouldn't say I'd want a wall if I lived in the US. I'd more likely want effective security, combined with immigration policy, including adherence to the asylum laws already in existence, as well as international asylum laws, including compassionate treatment of refugees. I'd want America, the only home they ever knew, to be a safe home for the DACA people.

That sound OK with you? Or is it too much that I expect?
luzribeiro: (Default)
[personal profile] luzribeiro


A few months later...



I'm amazed by the amount of ignorance in some circles who've commented on this. So let's clear out some things right from the get-go.

Read more... )
dexeron: (angry)
[personal profile] dexeron
By now, of course, everyone has heard the most recent horror to utter from Trump's mouth: he wants the soldiers of the United States military (recently deployed to confront the "caravan" of Central American refugees) to treat anyone throwing rocks as if they are holding a rifle. Setting aside for a moment the fact that Trump's characterization of the refugees as violent is completely unfounded, Trump was, in effect, giving orders to the United States military to respond to rock throwing with lethal force. This violates not only U.S. military law, but all known rules of engagement as well as the values military personnel subscribe to. Many veterans have spoken out, decrying Trump's statement, and noting that they were often subject to rock throwing in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet refrained from using their firearms because they knew it would be a war crime. One would hope that the training and values of the U.S. military would likewise protect the Central American refugees should some of them actually throw rocks or appear in any other way potentially threatening, but I fear that the situation is far more complicated, and dangerous, than that.

Read more... )
mahnmut: (Default)
[personal profile] mahnmut

While most media are helplessly parroting talking-points and treating the precious viewer with shallow interpretations from the video exchange of US televisions about what's going on around the Central American roads these days, a true and unseen phenomenon is unraveling down there. What's being carelessly presented to us as a trivial push of Latinos who've been enchanted by the tale of the American Dream, what's really happening is a brewing rebellion of the South against the North, of the poor against the wealthy, of the indignant against the deplorable.

Sure, we're talking about a reaction to social inequality and the unbearable living conditions that have been indirectly (or often, directly) generated by the US within their own backyard for two centuries now. It's the inability of these people to cope with their situation that is causing a second mass invasion that originated from Honduras and is threatening the Mexican-US border. The previous one was in March and it had 1,500 people. After a ton of threats about draconian measures from Washington unless it was stopped, the Mexican authorities somehow managed to absorb the bulk of the migrant flood on their territory.

Read more... )
asthfghl: (Слушам и не вярвам на очите си!)
[personal profile] asthfghl
Every regime brought through democratic elections that stays for too long, sooner or later gets perverted into authoritarianism. The lack of competition, and the cementing of the political elites, almost always brings forth the need for a doctrine that would excuse the erosion of the basic tenets of democracy and human rights.

EU Parliament votes to trigger Article 7 sanctions procedure against Hungary

No doubt, this decision will provoke lots of passions and divisions: for and against self-determination, for and against Orban himself. The petty attempts to frame the debate as ideological, especially the effort to paint the Hungarian PM into some sort of ideological image (conservative, nationalist, versus basic EU "liberal" values) sticks out over the ideological desert that has engulfed the EU, concealing (for now) the true danger that the so-called "Orbanism" poses. We've come to the point where people and entire societies who've just made their first steps into the labyrinth of democracy, and who lack the basic instincts and DNA of democracy, have now started lecturing established democracies about what democracy is. And I'm saying this as a citizen of one of the least advanced democracies on the continent!

Read more... )
luzribeiro: (Default)
[personal profile] luzribeiro
Never did I expect to see a US president who makes George W Bush lucid LOL :-D

President Claims He Never Said Something He Tweeted Three Days Ago

In his defense, he did support Goodlatte II, and never said anything about Goodlatte 2. He could never support something Arabic!

But no, he actually didn't forget anything, he's just gaslighting us. That feeling that the country is losing its mind everyone seems to be having? People doing what Trump is doing is a big part of why. Being gaslit makes you feel like you're losing it.

I can understand one person being a pathological narcissist and actually suffering some kind of mental illness - but a whole half of all voting citizens getting fooled into voting for such a person - now that's quite something.

What's even more stunning than that, though, is how of course Republicans don't seem to care. If Trump does something they like, it's because he meant it and he's good. If Trump does something they don't like, it's because he doesn't mean it, and it is in fact part of a cunning strategy to "shape the narrative" or "drive the libcuck media into a frenzy" while he secretly gets what he wants.

Like with Brexit, you get what you vote for, even if it's by a small margin. The vocal people win, which is not necessarily to the advantage of the country but is a fair cry against abuse. The voters are taken in and exploited further.

And there are at least 2, if not 6 more years of the same.
fridi: (Default)
[personal profile] fridi

Let's look at this from another angle. In about 10-15 years some of these kids in Cages presently panicked and shrieking for mother are going to be hormone rushed teens or 20+ and with memories of the American brutes with uniforms, badges, and guns who tore them away from their screaming, pleading, agonized, terrorized, and utterly powerless mothers. At that time Americans will once again scratch their heads and wonder, "Why do they hate us?"

Let's also not forget the cartels themselves (the ones who smuggle those kids to the border and subject them to all sorts of abuse on the way) are mostly funded by American drug habits. How much can a nation exploit and abuse other societies before they finally admit culpability? How many human rights abuses are we okay with excusing for the protection of an imaginary line in the sand?

I guess it makes sense that the right move for the most powerful and arrogant country on Earth is prosecuting and further abusing people who are already taken advantage of instead of, ya know, attacking the actual organized crime infrastructure that allows that kind of thing to exist.

But looking at the larger picture )

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