Iranâs solution to possible war with the US. If this happened, Trump would say he got a love letter from the Ayatollah:
Little-known technology shows Pentagon the best story to use about its reasons for war:
This week, the Trump administration argued in court that detained migrant children do not require basic hygiene products like soap and toothbrushes in order to be held in âsafe and sanitaryâ conditions:
Mitch ainât willing to discuss reparations:
Reparations are a difficult subject. As the historian Howard Zinn said, âYou canât be neutral on a moving train.â He meant that you either abide the status quo, or you oppose it. You either commit yourself to be the best anti-racist you can be, or you donât. Whichever you choose, you should be honest in how you frame your choice. Saying that reparations are not worth pursuing, or simply doing nothing about them, is an implicit defense of the policies and systems that have created our present-day racial inequities.
The Supremes held 7-2 that a cross located in a war memorial could be displayed on public property (at a traffic circle). They said that some crosses are merely historic icons. Their decision favors one religion over others, and it seems hostile towards religious minorities. And why wonât Christians act like Christians?
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado – 2019 photo by VincentLedvina
Whomever the Democrats nominate for President must share their vision on immigration. Democrats need to have clear answers about how we got here, and how Trump is making it worse. And they have to say what we should do about it.
The American voter barely pays attention, but they are persuadable by big ideas that are communicated clearly.
The UN reports that a quarter of a billion people worldwide are immigrating. Moral considerations aside, the developed world needs to deal with migration on an epic scale over the next 20 years. This is partly due to climate change in the global South, and is partly due to mass destabilization caused by tribal warfare throughout the third world.
These factors create two kinds of migrants: economic migrants seeking a better life, and refugees fleeing personal danger. The WaPo reports that weâre seeing huge numbers of migrants: (brackets by Wrongo)
US Customs and Border Protection statistics …show more than 144,000 migrants were taken into custody [in May], a 32% jump from April. It was…the largest one-month arrest total since…Trump took office, and it was the highest monthly figure in 13 years….May was the third month in a row that border detentions topped 100,000, led by record-breaking levels of illegal crossings by Guatemalan and Honduran parents bringing children.
Some 45 million foreign-born people now make their home in the US. About 12 million live here illegally. Globally, immigration is remaking nations on a world-altering scale.
Politicians throughout the developed world are aware of these trends, and either deny their existence, or are calling for draconian policies to protect their borders and keep migrants out. In America, we see some people who want open borders and many who want the borders closed.
Wrongo witnessed how open borders work in Eastern Europe last year. The EU has the Schengen policy that allows cross-border migration throughout Europe. Poland and Hungary continually lose educated, younger workers to Western Europe, because pay and working conditions are better. Open borders have caused Poland’s and Hungary’s populations to skew older, and less skilled.
America needs a comprehensive policy that deals humanely with all types of migrants, but we must secure our borders. We canât have open borders.
How should we secure our borders? We need physical border control in all high traffic areas, and we have to add border enforcement wherever it is easy to cross unimpeded.
Democrats should take Trump’s wall off the table for 2020. Its cost is a rounding error in the annual budget, and more security is better than less.
We need a hard annual cap of immigrants to the US. It could be high, say 1 million, or lower. The level is worth a serious debate.
Once the cap is exceeded, anyone trying to enter will be returned to their home country.
We should give preference to those immigrants who have demonstrable skills or educational preparation. American economic growth relies on the skill and productivity of our people. When an immigrant joins the American economy, that person is asking us to honor a multi-generational commitment to him/her and to each of his/her descendants. We should be selective.
We should continue having geographic quotas that apply against the overall hard cap.
We should expand work, temporary work and student visa quotas.
We should deport any immigrant convicted of a serious crime either in the US, or in their home country.
We should provide amnesty to all law-abiding illegal immigrants now resident in the US.
Any illegal migrant who is physically in the country must be treated humanely and with respect until their case is adjudicated. Cages must go.
To accomplish this will require a substantial financial investment to support migrants who the border patrol is apprehending. Weâll need more case workers, immigration judges, medical staff, and substantially increased, and humanely built and operated facilities.
This will cost billions, but eventually, the bulge of migrants attempting to enter may decline, and we will then be able to cut back on the level of services.
Pushing our border control back on Mexico is a partial solution. Trump is correct about that. His gratuitous brutalities shock our conscience, and fail even on their own terms. Intended as deterrents, they are not deterring.
If Mexico can cut off a portion of the illegal immigration before migrants try to enter the US, we are better off, but Mexico is worse off. It would be easier to get Mexicoâs support via cooperation, rather than by coercion via tariffs.
Democrats want to restore development funding for Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Thatâs a fine idea, but we should not expect that it will achieve much of a decrease in economic migration. Most of the funding will be siphoned off by the governments and by local criminals. Little will reach the target.
America needs a bipartisan immigration solution. If we werenât paralyzed by partisan rancor, we would already have one. Controlling immigration, and selecting the immigrants more carefully, enables us to quickly and successfully absorb those who come here, and to ensure equality of opportunity to both the newly arrived, and the rest of us.
Our goal must be to make everyone feel that they belong to one nation.
âPresident Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to impose new tariffs on Mexico if the country does not step up its immigration enforcement actions, combining his boiling border-related frustrations with his preferred method of punishing foreign countries.
Trump said in a White House statement that the first round of tariffs would begin on June 10 at 5% âon all goods imported from Mexico.â The statement said Trump would carry out his threat under authority from the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and that he would lift tariffs only âif the illegal migration crisis is alleviated through effective actions taken by Mexico.â
The statement warned further that if Mexico does not act as Trump demands, tariffs would go up to 10% by July, 15% by August, 20% by September and reach a permanent level of 25% by October.â
Mexico probably does need to do more to stop migrants crossing their country.
OTOH, they like America, have rules that safeguard migrants. Itâs doubtful that the Trump administration has studied those rules or cares about them, any more than they care about ours.
According to Forbes, The US imported $346.5 billion in goods from Mexico last year and for the first three months of 2019, they increased 5.4%. At that rate there would be $365 billion imported in 2019. At a 5% tariff, companies would have to either raise prices or take an $18 billion hit to profits. And it is companies and eventually consumers that will pay these new Trump tariffs, not the exporting country as Trump consistently misrepresents.
This is why the DOW fell 355 points on Friday.
Trump used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act as his legal basis to place tariffs on Mexico. Itâs a Cold War-era law that actually vests the presidency with absurdly broadly defined, near-dictatorial powers in many areas. But, prior presidents, even Reagan and Bush 43, never conceived in their wildest dreams of using them except in an ACTUAL emergency. And they didn’t.
Trump doesn’t care, he sees a hammer, and decides that it isn’t for driving nails; it’s for breaking Mexican kneecaps. Matt Yglesias explains that thereâs an easy climb down for Trump in this. Migration from/through Mexico is very seasonal, peaking in the spring, and declining sharply in the summer.
Trump will probably pretend to get some concessions from Mexico and declare victory in a couple of months. His moron supporters will surely applaud that.
At some point, Democrats will have to frame these and Trumpâs other tariffs for what they are: a national sales tax on imports. Dems need to start explaining to the public that these tariffs are a national sales tax on everything from Mexico, including cars and components for US car manufacturers. Maybe saying this:
âTrump is making Americans pay a sales tax on imports until illegal immigration stops. How will Americans paying higher taxes force Mexico to stop illegal immigration?â
That’s how it should be framed.
Enough! Weâve been Mueller âed and Trump âed all week, and itâs time for your Saturday Soother!
On the first day of June, Wrongo hopes that you are in short sleeves, and thinking of getting outdoors, and that doesnât mean shopping at the mall.
Letâs start by brewing up a vente cup of Hawaii Kau Champagne Natural from Paradise Roasters ($19.95/12 oz.). This coffee tied for the highest rating in Coffee Reviewâs May 2019 tasting report of Hawaiâi-grown coffees. They say that its tropical and floral aromas lead into a sweet and complex dessert-like cup.
Paradise has experimented with yeast fermented coffees that produce a more intense and complex flavor than traditional methods. It evokes Champagne, fruity but dry, and not effervescent. They only roast this coffee on one day: June 3rd, 2019. So you have been alerted to act fast.
Now, move outside, assuming you live in a part of the world that isnât suffering from rain or tornadoes. Put on your wireless headphones, and listen to a Philadelphia-based Irish band, BarleyJuice, play their tune, âWeekend Irishâ:
Sample Lyric:
And the blood runs deep,
When the booze is cheap,
Long as you ain’t got an agenda to keep,
You can be a Weekend Irish, hey!
Aye, aye, we’re the Weekend Irish
And we’ll raise a hand,
To the motherland,
Best part of being an American,
To be a Weekend Irish
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
The Wrongologist does not condone identity politics, unless it involves weekend singing, dancing and drinking.
We should talk about the Democratsâ unwillingness to articulate an immigration policy. Wrongo has shied away from talking much about immigration, because it is a very complicated problem without a school-book answer. Itâs an emotional issue, but it is also a complex problem that isnât easily addressed.
Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report says that immigration will be a key issue in 2020, since Trump will surely stoke more immigration fear to hold on to his base while trying to peel away working-class white voters who might otherwise be voting for Democrats.
Despite historical data that show border crossings are relatively low, weâre faced with a genuine border crisis. The number of people attempting to cross the border and seek asylum rose to about 100,000 in March. If sustained, that would be more than a million asylum seekers a year.
There are now 800,000 pending cases in immigration courts, and each case requires about 700 days to process. Most of these families have woefully inadequate resources for housing, food and medical care. And now, Trump plans to ship them from detention to Americaâs sanctuary cities.
Weâre at a critical juncture. Trumpâs Immigration policy based on incarceration, deportation, and border militarization has proven to be a disastrous failure. But what should replace it? As the crisis grows, maybe the possibility for political change can improve. The NYT’sDavid Leonhardt said this about Democrats:
â…not so long ago. The partyâs leaders knew what they favored and felt comfortable saying so. Their platform generally included: 1) a path to citizenship for immigrants who came to this country illegally but had since obeyed the law; 2) deportation of undocumented immigrants who had since broken the law in significant ways; 3) fairly robust border security and investigation of companies employing undocumented immigrants, to hold down current and future levels of illegal immigration.â
In the past, Democrats were also willing to talk about limiting immigration. David Frum has a must read article in Aprilâs Atlantic. His biggest point is that âIf Liberals Wonât Enforce Borders, Fascists Willâ. He feels that we are at an inflection point, and that Democrats in particular, need to promote policies to prevent Trump from riding the wave of anti-immigrant sentiment into a second term.
Democrats, including some 2020 presidential hopefuls, have expressed ever greater unease about removing unauthorized border-crossers. JuliĂĄn Castro wants to decriminalize the very act of crossing the border illegally, by repealing 1325, the section of the US Code that makes unauthorized entry into the US a federal crime. No other Democrat is willing to go that far.
âOur view of how we go forward is if we can….give [the American] people confidence, end some of their insecurities about their own economic situation, there will be a better atmosphere among some who are opposed to immigration in the country….â
This is why Democrats are more focused on their economic agenda than rewriting immigration laws.
When it comes to immigration, public sentiment is not on the Democratsâ side. A Gallup poll from early March found opinions largely split on how much voters worry about illegal immigration:Â 36% of those surveyed said they worried a âgreat deal,â followed by, âonly a littleâ at 24%, ânot at allâ at 21% and a âfair amountâ at 18%.
A different Gallup poll in February found that 47% of respondents felt that large numbers of undocumented immigrants entering the US was a critical threat. Another 30% said it was important, while 22% said it was not important. That 77% who view undocumented immigrants as a threat was up by 8 points from a year earlier.
The pressure on Democrats will be to run as pro-immigrant in 2020 since it contrasts completely with Trumpâs position. But with so many people concerned about border security and illegal immigration; that may not be a wise political decision.
Dems can make a case that it would be destabilizing and impractical to remove all who have been living peaceably in this country for many years. But they canât support a position like Castroâs that says any non-felon who sets foot in the US should be allowed to remain here.
Wrongo favors setting hard overall quotas for all immigration, and a hard sub-quota for asylum requests.
We canât solve the illegal immigration problem overnight, but we can warn potential migrants that once the yearly quota is reached, all will be denied entrance.
And Wrongo is in favor of letting in fewer low-skills immigrants and more high-skills immigrants. That could help reduce poverty among immigrants while also potentially lifting domestic economic growth.
Tax day! Wrongo got the Wrong family taxes finished, and submitted with a few days to spare. Last week was one of the many that will make you scratch your head. Here are three amazing things from last week:
Scientists unveiled an image of a black hole
That image is 50 million years old
Millions of Americans still believe the Earth is 6,000 years old
And just when you thought Americaâs cities couldnât be any more corrupt, check out NYCâs Hudson Yards, Manhattanâs mega-project that is the largest private real estate development in the US by area. Private? City Lab reports that Hudson Yards was partially bankrolled by a federal investor visa program called EB-5, which was meant to help poverty-stricken areas:
“Specifically, the project raised at least $1.2 billion of its financing through a controversial investor visa program known as EB-5. This program enables immigrants to secure visas in exchange for real estate investments. Foreigners who pump between $500,000 and $1 million into U.S. real estate projects can purchase visas for their families, making it a favorite for wealthy families abroad, namely in China. EB-5 is supposed to be a way to jumpstart investment in remote rural areas, or distressed urban ones.”
The threshold for these EB-5 visas can be reduced to $500,000 if investors place their capital in a “targeted employment area” (TEA). The TEA can be either a rural community or distressed urban area with a high unemployment rate (at least 150% of the national average).
Investors typically obtain visas for two additional family members, so Business Insider thinks the development likely created about 10,000 EB-5 visas, the maximum permitted in any year.
These are the kind of immigrants both parties can agree should be let in!
But is Hudson Yards a distressed neighborhood? It is bordered by expensive neighborhoods such as Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen. It sits at the start of the High Line, and is too wealthy to qualify for the EB-5 program. To solve the problem, the state included a few census tracts from Harlem as part of the Hudson Yards TEA. Hereâs a map of the TEA:
This looks just like a gerrymandered Congressional district in North Carolina. And it tells you all you need to know about how our local, state, and federal politicians are in the pocket of private industry. Money is always the driving factor, and it engulfs our politicians of both parties in a stew of questionable ethics.
America can’t be bothered investing in our own people, so we sell visas to bribe foreigners to do the investing for us.
Time to wake up America! This is the tip of the iceberg for the rot in our political process. To help you wake up, listen to âWhy We Build the Wallâ from the 2010 album âHadestownâ by AnaĂŻs Mitchell. This “folk opera” opens on Broadway on Wednesday. The play is inspired by the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Here is âWhy We Build the Wallâ, featuring Greg Brown. Wrongo is seeing the play in the middle of May:
Note that this song was written in 2010, long before Trump, or any politician had any interest in building a wall.
Sample Lyric:
Who do we call the enemy?
The enemy is poverty,
And the wall keeps out the enemy,
And we build the wall to keep us free.
That’s why we build the wall;
We build the wall to keep us free.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
The Cuernos del Paine in Chile â photo via Live Science. The 4,300-mile-long Andes, the longest continuous mountain range in the world, didn’t form slowly by one geologic plate sliding under another. They grew in two growth spurts helped by volcanic action. (Hat tip to Ottho H.)
What Trump said about El Paso in the SOTU:
âThe border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crimeâone of the highest in the country, and (was) considered one of our nationâs most dangerous cities. Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities,â
Local politicians werenât happy with Trumpâs false claims that the city was violent and dangerous before a border wall was built. Trump was repeating bogus information from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. And, he had made the same claim at the American Farm Bureau convention in mid-January.
Here is an example of the local outrage. Jon Barela, the chief executive officer of the Borderplex Alliance, which leads economic development efforts in the El Paso region, tweeted:
Texas Monthly reports that El Paso has made lists of the nationâs safest cities for almost two decades. But what are facts when you have a wall to build on the back of a racist narrative?
Wrongo lived in El Paso for a time when he was in the military (Vietnam era), back before there was talk of a wall, before the Maquiladora factories became a part of NAFTA, when Ciudad Juarez was probably far more dangerous than it is today. But back then, El Paso couldnât be considered dangerous for someone who went to college in Washington DC, and lived on the outskirts of NYC.
One state over in New Mexico, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, has ordered the withdrawal of the majority of National Guard troops stationed at the US state’s southern border, denouncing as “a charade” President Donald Trump’s warnings about migrants swarming the border, saying:
“I reject the federal contention that there exists an overwhelming national security crisis at the southern border, along which are some of the safest communities in the country,”
Are you getting the theme here? Two of the states closest to âthe problemâ say there isnât a problem.
Kevin Drum at MoJo gathered the El Paso statistics. He shows that Trump cherry-picked the data, looking at 2005-2009. There was a spike from 400 crimes/100,000 people in 2005 to 450 crimes/100,000 people in 2008. Here is a chart showing the same statistics from 1993 to 2013:
Do you see the big reduction that came with the Wall? The Wall had almost no effect on crime in El Paso. It’s also important to remember that crime rates have come down throughout the US since the 1980’s.
The most damning fact about crime on the southern border is that it is way down. American Progress reports that:
Border cities are among the nationâs safest: Phoenix and other large border (and near-border) cities have some of the nationâs lowest crime rates, including San Diego, El Paso, and Austin
Border counties have low violent crime rates: Counties along the southwest border have some of the lowest rates of violent crime per capita in the nation. Their rates have dropped by more than 30% since the 1990s.
Thereâs no evidence of âspilloverâ of violence from Mexico: El Paso, Texas, has three bridges leading directly into Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, a city which has suffered a significant percentage of the national death toll brought on by the Mexican war on drug cartels, which approaches 23,000 today.
El Paso experienced only 12 murders in 2009, which was actually down from 17 in 2008. San Diego, California saw 41 murders in 2009, down from 55 in 2008, and Tucson, Arizona experienced 35 in 2009 a significant decrease from the 65 murders committed in 2008.
We should remember that Trump is from Queens, an outer borough of New York City. He lived there during the 1970s and 1980s, so he knows first-hand what living in a high crime city feels like. He also knows that the high crime he (and Wrongo) experienced, wasnât caused by immigrants. That was when the Guardian Angels were founded in NYC. Trump lived there the whole time, he probably even took the subway.
His argument is false, and is clearly purely political. Heâs playing to the fears of those suburbanites too intimidated to visit NYC, even if they live less than 25 miles away. His audience is suburbanites in the Midwest and Northern states.
These same people believe European cities like London and Paris are full of Muslim âno-goâ zones. You can show them evidence that those cities are safer than their own suburbs, but that’s not the point.
Maybe “safe” really means “white”, so any place with too many non-whites is just too dangerous.
The sleeping kid is Joshua Trump. He was bullied for sharing the same last name as, you know. The kid is one Trump who has already mastered âExecutive Timeâ.
 Young Trump kinda sums up the SOTU, along with this:
Certainly looks like an âFUâ clap from Nancy Smash. Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times/Getty Images
Wrongo thinks the best part of the 1 œ hour Trumpshow were the shout outs to people in the audience. They took up about 1/3 of the time, and provided some interest, even if most were ham-handed efforts to represent administration policy. These introductions of citizens in the SOTU audience have been around since Ronald Reagan in 1982, and usually give us a bit of a break from the eternal SOTU spewing.
âThere were two truly well-done sections of the speech. One was the troll of the Democrats present around the divisive term âsocialism.â The other was a series of moments on the stories of Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans.â
Most of the speech was either recycled campaign themes from 2016, or possible 2020 themes being screen-tested for the Republican faithful. Republicans in the room were very happy to see that Dems wouldnât clap for the war on abortion, or for Trumpâs pledge that America would never be a socialist country.
Wrongo thought that Trumpâs review of the economy was effective. It is surprising that he doesnât reference Americaâs late-stage economic recovery from the Great Recession more often. That, along with abortion, marauding immigrants, and socialism are setting the stage for what we can expect from Republicans over the next two years.
Why did Trump threaten Democrats about investigations? He said:
âIf there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation. It just doesnât work that way!â
Heâs saying that he will obstruct legislation unless Democrats stand down on investigating him. Fat chance. He also said this:
âAn economic miracle is taking place in the United States â and the only thing that can stop it are foolish wars, politics, or ridiculous partisan investigations…â
Nobody should threaten Americaâs economy for personal reasons. That prompted some boos from Democrats. Even Republicans greeted Trumpâs threat to economy with near-silence. And the GOP werenât totally craven yes boys for Trump elsewhere in the speech. The part about trade was poorly received by GOP members. The part about pulling troops out of Afghanistan and Syria was also met with near-silence.
Nancy Pelosi said afterwards that even though Trump spoke of the honor of being in the House chamber to deliver the State of the Union:
âHe threatened the United States Congress not to exercise its constitutional responsibility of oversight.â
The SOTU was as boring as Sundayâs Super Bowl, but without the uncertainty of knowing who would win or lose.
Even before Trump opened his mouth at the SOTU, it was clear that America would be the loser.
Those of us of a certain age, but not quite old enough, were too young to attend the 1963 March on Washington. The march and Rev. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech influenced our era, our views, and changed the country. There are times one wishes, if only I could have been there for that moment in history. Then again, such thinking fixes the civil rights movement in time. The truth is, that struggle never ended.
Wrongo was in Washington in 1963. Dr. King is one of his heroes. And, as Tom Sullivan says, the struggle has never ended. Wrongo spent the 1960s and 1970s convinced that America would turn a corner, see the wrong in slavery, and know that racism was holding us back.
He thought that we would achieve a point of equilibrium where Americans of all stripes would accept each other as part of a larger tribe, one that shared common beliefs about democracy and equality for all.
Wrongo was wrong. Weâre not there. Weâve made some progress, but then we fell back on old beliefs.
Today we are 51 years removed from Dr. Kingâs assassination, and while America is better and fairer than it was then, we will enter the 2020âs needing to do much to improve society.
This brings me to MLKâs last book, âWhere Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?â published the year before he died. In it, King lays out a vision for Americaâs future, including the need for both better jobs and housing, higher pay and quality education. King called for an end to global suffering, saying that for the first time, humankind had the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.
He wrote about how Civil Rights reforms had fallen short, but he couldnât have envisioned what the Supreme Court did in gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with its 2013 decision in Shelby County vs. Holder.
So here we are in 2019 with white kids mocking Native Americans at the Lincoln Memorial, chanting âBuild that wall, build that wall.â This happened days after Trump made light of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee to mock Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Here we are: Income inequality is the highest itâs been since the 1940s.Our federal government is shut down because we canât agree about the threat posed by illegal immigrants asking for asylum at the US southern border. And racism is marching back into the light from under rocks all across the country.
Time to wake up America! Racism is the wound that wonât heal. We have much to do, and the work wonât be easy.
To help you wake up here is a 2019 song by The Killers, âLand of the Freeâ. It is broadly about America and the intolerance holding us back. Listen to it, and reflect on what it makes you feel. Depending on what about it makes you angry, it is a reflection of who you are. The video is very powerful. Please take the time to watch it.
Think about whatâs at the heart of this song. People who want the same things we do:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
âWhite men have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know.â
At midnight on Saturday, the shutdown entered its 22nd day, which makes it the longest gap in American government funding ever. That beats the previous record, under President Bill Clinton in 1995, of 21 days.
Of the 21 federal government shutdowns since 1976, nine of the ten longest occurred under Democratic presidents, where the obstruction was by Republicans.
But the current shutdown is a self-inflicted wound by Trump, so itâs also caused by a Republican.
Trump has help from Mitch McConnell, who is the most powerful man in DC. He has run our national politics since 2010. He was able to neutralize Obama, and now itâs his call how long this shutdown goes on. From the WaPo:
President Trump is not the only person in Washington who could end this government shutdown now.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) could bring a âcleanâ funding bill to the floor, free up his GOP caucus to support it and could quite possibly secure enough votes to override a presidential veto.
McConnell already did it once, when he believed he had Trumpâs blessing. Before the holidays he allowed a vote to keep the government running until Feb. 8, to avoid a shutdown and buy more time to negotiate Trumpâs demand for border wall funding. It passed easily.
After the past three weeks, it should be no surprise that, based on what we know, the GOPâs slogan is:
âParty over People, we really donât care, do you?â
There are a few simple truths about American history. First, that racism is our worst legacy. Second, that weâre a nation of, and built by, immigrants. Except for Native Americans, we all trace our origins to places beyond our borders.
So why do White nationalists and White Evangelicals insist on saying that we have the right to shut out all immigrants except those from Norway? From NPR:
From 1870 to 1910 a quarter of Norway’s working-age population immigrated, mostly to the United States. You read that right â one-fourth of its workers left the country.
Why? They were economic migrants. Their average wages were less than a third of what they could earn in the US. It also turns out that the immigrants that Norway sent to the US during the 1870s were its poorest and least educated citizens.
According to Leah Boustan, an economist at Princeton University, compared to immigrants from the 15 other European nations that were part of the same wave of arrivals:
…the Norwegians held the lowest paid occupations in the US. They tended to be farm laborers. They were also fishermen. If they were in cities they were just sort of in the manual labor category â what today you would think of as a day laborer.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Twenty years after their arrival in the US, the Norwegian immigrants were still making 14% less than native-born workers. In other words, they have a lot in common with many of today’s immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
Time to wake up, America! Trump doesnât want to develop an immigration policy. We know that, because he only creates phony crises, while he wishes away real ones.
Trump has declared conflicts with Mexico, NATO, Australia, and Canada where none exist. He has tried to frighten Americans by fabricating emergencies that do not exist on the Mexican border.
He declares victories where there are none: saying heâs solved North Koreaâs nuclear threat, and that he has beaten ISIS in Syria.
This isnât just Nancy Pelosiâs problem to solve. Republicans in the Senate need to show moral courage, force Mitch McConnellâs hand, and pass a veto-proof funding bill.
The number to call is the Senateâs switchboard: (202) 224-3121.
