Category Archives: immigration

There’ll Be Blowback

Posted on by
Reply

But it’ll be badly misplaced.  President Donald Trump is moving to stop further direct aid to the Caravan Triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras over those nations’ failure to control those caravans by putting to actual use that aid—which was intended to support improved economies, the living conditions within those economies, and training to deal with gangs and the drug trade.

[T]he State Department…notified Congress that it would look to suspend 2017 and 2018 payments to the trio of nations, which have been home to some of the migrant caravans that have marched through Mexico to the US. border.

This comes as Honduras has formed and put on the road a caravan of 20,000 people.  In response to this, Trump said

We were giving them $500 million. We were giving them tremendous aid.  We were paying them tremendous amounts of money, and we’re not paying them anymore because they haven’t done a thing for us.

Indeed, the blowback has already begun.  Senator Robert Menendez (D, NJ), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is claiming

Instead of doing our part to help stabilize the situation in the Northern Triangle and stem the flow of children and refugees to our borders, President Trump reportedly wants to make matters worse by blocking resources for programs that get to the root causes of this humanitarian crisis.

Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL), a member of the same committee, presaged the blowback with his October tweet:

I understand instinct to cut US aid to punish countries for failing to stop illegal migration. But our aid to #Honduras & #Guatemala isn’t cash.  It’s primarily equipment & training to stop drugs headed to US & to deal with the gangs causing people to leave those countries.

The sad fact is, though, that neither Menendez nor Rubio understand the underlying facts, that the aid, cash and equipment and training, are not going to the folks who need it—those people being gathered up into caravans.  It’s going through those governments to the oligarchs and thieves.  The people—and the putative trainers and trainees—are not seeing a cent or a centavo of the aid, nor are they getting a single bit of the equipment or training.

Beyond that, Mexico has already offered “migrants” and “asylum seekers” jobs and job opportunities and asylum.  That these folks ignore or reject Mexico’s offer gives the lie to the claim that they’re coming here to escape terrible conditions at home or to seek the protection of another government.

Wages of Bigotry?

Posted on by
Reply

It seems that some Americans are waking up to the institutional bigotry of the Progressive-Democratic Party, an awakening triggered by the blatant disregard for Party antisemitism that House Progressive-Democrats proudly displayed in their refusal last month to censure Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) over her anti-Semitic statements.  In that instance, Party chose, instead, to pass a heavily diluted resolution “disapproving” of bigotry in “all its forms,” but refusing to name the names of bigots in its own house.  Some Americans with Jewish heritage and religion are speaking up with dismay.

Mark Schwartz (D) Deputy Mayor of Teaneck, NJ:

We felt we had a home there [in the Party].  And now we feel like we have to check our passports.

Jordan Manor, a “gay Jewish Israeli-American” of Manhattan:

 The party I thought cared about me seems to disregard me when it comes to my Jewish identity.

Mark Dunec, Livingston, NJ, consultant and 2014 Progressive-Democratic candidate for Congress:

I’m physically afraid for myself and for my family.  I see my own party contributing to the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States.

A teacher in Queens has rejected Omar’s—and by extension, Pelosi’s—defense that Omar just didn’t know any better.

The fake defense she doesn’t know what she’s saying? I don’t believe it.  This is a grown woman and a member of Congress. Trying to excuse this as naivete is inexcusable.

It isn’t just anger, either; many are acting.  The Queens teacher has quit Party and now is registered as an Independent.  Allison Gangi of Manhattan, too:

The watered-down resolution triggered my decision to walk away from the Democratic Party.

That Teaneck Deputy Mayor?

Our only question now is, do we start voting Republican, or do we become Republicans?

And others, like this one, see the danger explicitly:

I’m homeless. I don’t think I can vote for Trump, even though he’s great for Israel.  But as a Jew, I can’t see a way to support the Democratic Party. It’s supporting your own destruction.

Border Crises

Posted on by
Reply

There are two, and both of them are real.  One is the caravans, organized by three Central American nations’ activists explicitly to overwhelm our southern border and border enforcers with illegal alien wannabes and faux asylum seekers (false because they’ve already been offered asylum—and job opportunities, to boot—by Mexico).  Secreted among these seemingly innocuous ones (aside from their deliberate numbers) are drug smugglers, firearms smugglers, human traffickers, and outright thugs.

The other crisis, wholly artificially done, is the Progressive-Democrats’ efforts to block the installation of security measures to protect our borders and so our interior and our citizens.  That obstructionist and open-border policy is now exemplified by their lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration and associated reallocation of Federal funds to build walls in key sectors of that border.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction to prevent Trump from shifting billions of dollars from military construction to the border without explicit congressional approval. The suit also asks a court to declare Trump’s actions illegal, arguing that Trump showed a “flagrant disregard of fundamental separation of powers principles engrained in the United States Constitution” by violating the Constitution’s Presentment and Appropriations Clauses, which govern federal spending.

Never mind that the Courts have no say in what constitutes a national emergency; that’s strictly an Executive Branch decision.  Never mind that the funds being shifted have already been appropriated and allocated to the relevant Department and Agency heads.  Never mind that the funds being reallocated were never earmarked by Congress within those facilities to specific purposes, as the vast majority of appropriated funds are—these few funds explicitly were left to those Department and Agency heads’ discretion regarding the things on which they would be spent.

And never mind, either, that the targets for the spending are directly related to the Department/Agency functions: military construction funds are going to be spent on construction.  Drug interdiction funds are going to be spent on drug interdiction—that being one of the purposes of the walls.  Funds for ATF not specifically allocated are going to be spent on interdicting trafficked firearms—that being another purpose of the walls.  Never mind that DHS funds not otherwise specifically allocated are going to be spent on interdicting human traffickers and violent criminals—that being another purpose of the walls.

And never mind that while there is considerable money appropriated and allocated for border and border crossing point detection surveillance technology, increased border personnel, increased numbers of immigration judges assigned to the border cases, and increased asylum seeker housing, these are useless without walls, just as walls are useless without those others.

This second border crisis is a wholly artificial crisis manufactured solely for the personal political gain of Progressive-Democrats and for the benefit of Party.

Full stop.

Italy and Migrant Shipping

Posted on by
Reply

There’s a case making its way through the Italian courts that challenges the government’s policy of denying docking rights to migrant rescue boats.  Critics are up in arms. The policy, they assert, would

leav[e] them in the Mediterranean Sea for days or even weeks—a campaign critics have branded as cruel but that has garnered support from many Italians.

The critics, though, are being disingenuous. To the extent that there is cruelty here, it’s on the part of the “rescue boat” captains and the ships’ operators who have chosen to spend those days or even weeks trying to force entry rather than moving promptly to other nations’ ports where they would be allowed entry.

There are arguments for and against the Italian policy, but this sort of distortion does not advance the debate a bit.

Progressive-Democrats and a Wall

Posted on by
Reply

In a Fox News Online piece about a Fox News Sunday interview with President Donald Trump’s Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney from last Sunday, there appeared this gem from House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D, MS).

…Thompson…broke with some of his fellow congressional Democrats by acknowledging in an interview that he “would not rule out a wall in certain instances,” although he cautioned that the White House needs a better “plan” than simply using a wall as a “talking point.”

But then he said this:

“Mr President, Democrats will work with you.  But you can’t pick what Democrats you work with. We have picked our leaders, and you have to work with our leaders.  The notion that we can’t have barriers is just something that’s not true.”

This is the level of disingenuousness Republicans are stuck working with.  “Walls work in certain instances. You have to work with our leaders. We can have barriers.”  But Progressive-Democratic Party leadership—particularly House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) have promised no wall, no way, not ever.

The Progressive-Democrats are offering only talking points, not negotiation.  Still.