Immigration – Page 2 – The Wrongologist

The Mess That Is Congress

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Henry Driggers Park, Brunswick, GA – December 2023 photo by Kyle Morgan

“Dress me up for battle when all I want is peace
Those of us who pay the price come home with the least”

(from 1976’s “Harvest for the World”, by the Isley Brothers)

There are only 11 days left until Christmas, and there are only three more days this year when the Senate is in session, and just two days left for the House. That schedule could be amended and lengthened if both Houses can reach agreement on anything before they break this Friday.

Prime among the legislation that should/must pass is aid for Ukraine. And Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy’s in Washington to try to help turn a few politicians to help. From the WaPo:

“The visit — less than three months after Zelenskyy’s last trip to Washington — comes at a critical time for the supplemental appropriations bill….Republicans have demanded that the package include border policy changes, and some Democrats criticized the White House on Monday for being willing to give up too much in those negotiations after Biden said he was willing to agree to “significantly more” to strike a deal.”

Biden says he’s willing to deal, but Congress seems very likely to leave for the holidays without passing any new Ukraine package. From David Frum in The Atlantic:

“The ostensible reason is that they want more radical action on the border than the Biden administration has offered. The whole aid package is now stalled, with potentially catastrophic consequences for Ukraine. Ukrainian units are literally running out of ammunition.”

“How is any of this happening? On past evidence, a clear majority of Senate Republicans sincerely want to help Ukraine. Probably about half of House Republicans do too. In a pair of procedural test votes in September, measures to cut or block aid to Ukraine drew, respectively, 104 and 117 Republican votes of the 221 (Republicans then) in the caucus.”

Biden’s offer to negotiate with Republicans about the border is meaningful. The fundamental reason for today’s border crisis is that would-be immigrants game the asylum system. The system is overwhelmed by the numbers claiming asylum. Most of those claims will ultimately be rejected, but the processing of each takes years. In the meantime, most asylum seekers will be released into the US.

Biden’s proposal is $14 billion of additional funding that would pay for 1,600 new staff in the asylum system. New hires can speed up the process, reducing the incentive for asylum claimants who get de facto US residency while their claim is pending.

But are Republicans willing to negotiate? It doesn’t seem like they are. The Republicans in the Senate’s position is stated by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) who said:

“There’s a misunderstanding on the part of Senator Schumer….This is not a traditional negotiation, where we expect to come up with a bipartisan compromise on the border. This is a price that has to be paid in order to get the supplemental.”

This is 2023: For some Republicans, what matters isn’t what they get, but how they get it.

That’s also true in the House where Speaker Johnson (R-Bible) told Zelenskyy that the US southern border should come first in negotiations with Democrats over aid for Ukraine.

Clearly the Republican House members are in it to strike poses and television hits. They do not want to make deals. They each want to position themselves as the one true conservative too pure for dealmaking. The only things they’re willing to admit they want are the things they know to be impossible.

It’s a complicated situation, because House Republicans have one set of immigration demands while Republicans in the Senate refuse to say what their demands are.

This means Biden has to make a deal that Senate Democrats won’t want. Otherwise we’re headed to a “no” that will doom Ukraine and disgrace the US in the eyes of the world while doing nothing to remedy the crisis at the border.

If Congressional leadership was ever needed, it’s needed today.

Jon V. Last in the Bulwark lists the two real-world reasons for Biden to give in. First, that Ukraine is more important than our domestic immigration policy:

“The war is a finite event, the results of which will influence global economics and security for years and decades to come. Depending on the outcome, NATO will either congeal or fracture. Peace and security in Europe will either stabilize or destabilize. China will either be deterred or encouraged in its quest to subjugate Taiwan.”

Second, immigration is a perennial challenge for America. Even if we “solved” current immigration problems today, next year, we’d have more immigration problems to re-solve:

“Immigration does need reform. Huge sections of the system are broken, the humanitarian crisis at the border is real, and there are some areas where Democrats and Republicans have similar views of which reforms are needed.”

Jon Last also points out that there are good political reasons for Biden to make a deal. First, a deal makes Republicans co-owners of the border problem. For Republicans, immigration is like abortion: It’s not an issue they want to solve; it’s a political club they want to wield.

Second, Biden can paint Republicans as anti-Ukraine even after making an immigration deal. He can say that Republicans didn’t want to fund Ukraine (which polls well with voters) so he had to take action to make sure they didn’t hand Putin a victory.

Third, an immigration deal shores up Biden’s position with Hispanic and swing voters. Immigration is a very important issue to voters and large majorities of them disapprove of Biden’s immigration policies.

Fourth, Biden can then reinforce his 2024 narrative that the election is a choice between governing, or chaos. He’s going to try to disqualify Trump and make 2024 a contest between a workhorse who gets bipartisan compromises done and a chaos agent who burns everything down.

JV Last says:

“Cutting a deal on immigration in order to get aid to Ukraine lets Biden say (a) “I’m the guy who gets business done by doing bipartisan compromise,” but also (b) “If you don’t like this deal, Democratic voters, then we have to win back the House.”

Good thinking from Last.

Wrongo has generally steered clear of debates over immigration and the Wall because they have a high noise to signal ratio, and neither side is always great on the facts.

It’s curious: You would assume that all Republicans should be pounding on their Congressional representatives to increase the number of immigration judges immediately! But they aren’t since that would conflict with their idea of shrinking the administrative state. They shouldn’t be able to have it both ways.

One way to cut illegal immigration down would be to crack down on foreign remittances. Most immigrants are sending money back home to help the rest of their families survive. If remittances required an ID card that only citizens or those with a valid visa could obtain, remittances would fall.

All we can do now is hope for cooler heads to make a deal before year end.

We Can’t Give Up Hope

The Daily Escape:

First snow, Great Balsam Mountains, Canton, NC – October 2023 photo by Brandon Montgomery

“To hope is to risk frustration. Therefore, make up your mind to risk frustration.” – Thomas Merton

Everyone’s talking about Hamas, the Gaza hospital and Jim Jordan. Wrongo is certain to write more about those issues, but today, let’s talk about two polls that seem to be telling us a lot about what Americans are feeling right now.

First, the survey by Pew Research “Americans’ Dismal Views of the Nation’s Politics” confirms that millions of Americans are feeling so exhausted and depressed by American politics that they are disengaging from it just when its important to fully engage. Some highlights:

65% of respondents describe themselves as “exhausted” when thinking about politics.
55% say they are “angry” about American politics.
Only 4% say politics makes them feel hopeful.
Pew also asked people to describe American politics in one word. The second most common description was “corrupt”—behind the first-place finisher, “divisive.”

Here’s the tag cloud from Pew:

Notice that there aren’t any positive words that made the cut from the responses. From Robert Hubbell:

“It is no wonder that people want to disengage and look away. Exhaustion is the point of MAGA extremism.”

Hubbell goes on to point out that Republicans turn every issue into an attack:

“Impeach Trump? We’ll impeach Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, Jack Smith, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Christopher Wray.

Indict Trump? We’ll indict Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden.

Protect Americans from a deadly virus? We’ll undermine trust in science.

Fight human-caused climate change? We will make it illegal to discuss climate change in the classroom.”

These responses are part of a mind game designed to make Democrats and Independents give up and go away. But his great idea is this:

“We have one job: To endure, to abide, to keep the faith until this moment of reactionary extremism subsides. If we can do that, we will leave to our heirs a healthier, stronger democracy.”

John Dean Also wrote about this:

“…I was thinking about how Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. The first thing that came to mind was his iconic poster with his image and the word “HOPE.” That differentiated Obama from his Democratic party competitors…and his Republican rival, John McCain. Obama embraced hope and the future, and he won.”

Some people attribute the negative messages offered by current candidates to the fact that today’s world is troubled. But as Dean points out, the world was also deeply troubled in 2008 and only Obama was offering hope. He won two terms.

Remembering 9/11

The Daily Escape:

This mass includes parts of five floors of the North Tower of NYC’s World Trade Center that compacted on 9/11/2001 during the building’s collapse. iPhone photo by Wrongo taken at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, September 2016.

The above is among Wrongo’s favorite pieces at the 9/11 Memorial Museum. It is a charred and pitted lump of fused concrete, melted steel, carbonized furniture and other, less recognizable elements. It weighs between 12 and 15 tons and is four feet high. If you ever thought that humans who were in the Twin Towers when they collapsed might have survived, consider this pancake.

The 9/11 Memorial’s email today asked this question:

“Did you know that over 100 million Americans have been born since September 11, 2001?”

Although Wrongo has a grandson who was born later that week and who’s now turning 22, Wrongo had no idea that roughly 30% of Americans have no memory of this event that profoundly shaped America in the past 22 years.

What do those of us who do remember 9/11 want to tell those who can’t remember it? Maybe that there’s too much fear in America, and all of that fear is grinding us down. The visible scars of 9/11 are gone, but more than ever, America lives in persistent fear.

We distrust Russia. We worry about inflation. We worry that our budget deficit will bankrupt us. We fear for our kids’ safety while they’re in school. We worry that if we lose our job we won’t find another one. Some of us worry that we’ll never find the job we’re looking for. Some of us think the rest of us are Communists. The Lefties think the Righties are fascists, and we’re still afraid that ISIS will attack us on our streets. We fear the mob outside our gates trying to get in. We fear the immigrants already inside the gates.We think most of the news we see is fake. Many of us distrust our public school teachers.

Hell, we don’t trust our government!

Succumbing to so much fear has enabled the growth of internal threats that could end our democracy:

We’re so angry that we’ve lost much of our social cohesion
We aren’t willing to deal with income inequality
We’re seeing overt racism grow before our eyes
We see clear threats to the right to vote, or whether our votes will even count if we cast them

So today’s wakeup call is for America, particularly for those Americans born after 9/11. Don’t forget the heroes and the victims of 9/11, but please, learn to stop letting fear drive you as much as it drives those of us who are old enough to remember 9/11.

Here’s a 9/11 tune: The October 20, 2001 “Concert for New York” can’t be beat. It was a highly visible and early part of NYC’s healing process.

One of the many highlights of that 4+ hour show was Billy Joel’s medley of “Miami 2017 (seen the lights go out on Broadway)” and his “New York State of Mind”. Joel wrote “Miami 2017” in 1975, at the height of the NYC fiscal crisis. It describes an apocalyptic fantasy of a ruined NY that got a new, emotional second life after 9/11, when he performed it during the Concert for New York:

Check out the audience reaction to Joel’s songs. That doesn’t look like fear. That’s where we all need to be today in 2023. It isn’t hyperbole to say that the city began its psychological recovery that night in Madison Square Garden. Please visit the 9/11 Memorial and Museum if you haven’t been there yet.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 16, 2023

The WaPo has an excellent briefing on Biden’s new border policy. If you’ve wondered why there’s no longer mass chaos at the southern border since Title 42 was lifted, it’s because the Biden administration has completely transformed how migrants, asylum-seekers, and those who enter illegally are treated.

You have to apply to enter the US legally by making an appointment using an app. It can take up to six weeks to get the appointment, but once you do, you are interviewed, photographed, and released to a social service agency that helps migrants, or a relative or sponsor who has registered with the feds. (Plus the app uses GPS to track your movements.) You then wait for your application for asylum to be processed and your claim adjudicated.

If you enter illegally, you are sent to a massive tent city to be fed and given necessities. You get your health checked out. And then you are sent back over the border with instructions on how to apply legally via the app.

The two processes illustrate the extent to which the Biden administration has transformed the way asylum seekers and migrants are processed along the southern border. As a result, illegal crossings have dropped by close to 70% since early May. Yes, 43,000 asylum-seekers get into the US every month. But until Congressional Republicans agree to a sensible immigration policy, controlling the influx in this manner seems to be the best alternative. On to cartoons.

What the GOP cares about:

We won’t fight climate change, so you’ll have to:

The GOP’s latest tangent:

The GOP decides the FBI is liberal:

It’s ironic that the GOP wants to defund the FBI which has always been a Republican bastion. And if the Elephant wants help with his minor surgery, Wrongo’s happy to assist. It’s doubtful that the FBI is about to start prosecuting illegal corporate activities with the same eagerness they showed when chasing after BLM and Occupy Wall Street.

Trump’s latest delay tactic:

Hollywood’s on strike:

Immigration Reform Has To Happen

The Daily Escape:

Eastern Sequoia Canyon NP viewed from Mt. Whitney trail, CA – April 2017 photo by Peerman Craft Photography

The federal government is expecting a surge in migrants at the southern border after next week’s lifting of Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that has allowed the US to refuse to process asylum claims on public health grounds. In anticipation, the Biden administration is preparing to deploy an additional 1,500 troops to the southern border for 90 days.

Those troops are on top of about 2,500 who are serving there currently. None of the soldiers are armed. They are largely performing administrative tasks that free up Customs and Border Protection (CBP) staff to handle the anticipated surge of migrants.

This could be a critical political moment for Biden, who’s just launched his 2024 reelection bid. We seem to be on the verge of another potential border crisis, which brings the certainty of new attacks by Republicans. The GOP has been hammering the administration, saying Biden’s immigration plans are too little too late.

When Title 42 is lifted, CBP will rely on the existing Title 8 law, under which any individual who is deemed ineligible to be in the US faces a five-year ban on readmission – and criminal charges if found crossing illegally.

On Wednesday, US and Mexican officials agreed on new immigration policies. Under the agreement, Mexico will continue to accept up to 30,000 migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua who are turned away at the US border; and up to 100,000 individuals from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador who have family in the US will be eligible to live and work in Mexico.

The US is accepting 30,000 people per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela for two years and offering them the ability to work legally, as long as they enter legally, have eligible sponsors and pass vetting and background checks. We’re continuing to turn away migrants from those four countries who cross the border illegally.

We’ve been following the same ad hoc approach to immigration for the past several administrations: We find a temporary solution that can handle a surge in migrants while not providing an open door for all who wish to enter the US.

We share this problem with most other rich countries. On Tuesday, the World Bank’s latest World Development Report said that about 184 million people across the world now live in countries where they’re not citizens. About 37 million of the total are refugees, a number that has tripled over the last decade.

Most of the transit happens through Central America before migrants reach the southern US border. Border security isn’t rigorous enough there to stem the northward flow. Recognizing that problem, the administration announced that it will set up regional processing centers for migrants to apply to come to the US. These centers will be located in Colombia and Guatemala, two countries migrants often pass through on their way to the US-Mexico border.

Deciding who gets to stay in the US is a bigger challenge when the migrants have few job skills and they’re not seeking asylum. We differentiate between asylum seekers and economic migrants. With a current backlog of 1.3 million asylum cases to be heard (equal to 4.25 years), the system is clearly broken.

The question is what should we do to stop/slow the flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants attempting to cross our southern border? Bloomberg shows the scale of the problem:

What’s the answer to this? Wrongo doubts that there is ONE answer.

Do we create a kind of reverse Berlin Wall like Trump tried to do? If it became a militarized border, we could surely cut down on the migration and the southern border would be controlled. This is the wet dream of the anti-immigration hawks. But the cost of building and manning the wall with soldiers would be ruinous, and to date, militarized borders aren’t who we are as a country.

Do we undertake nation building in Central and South America, hoping that those countries can become more attractive to their potential migrants? America’s track record with nation-building is terrible. And think about the cost, which could be far greater than the cost of a militarized wall. Think about how much money would be skimmed into the pockets of local politicians.

But we can’t just leave our borders open. Open borders are a sign of a government that has lost control of its geography. It would ultimately lead to a reality that no American wants. This is the specter that instills fear into most Americans about the growing migration problem.

It appears that we’re going to continue using an orderly throttling and vetting process at the southern border to decide who among this new surge of migrants is allowed into the country. The bigger question is what should our immigration policy be going forward? We haven’t had immigration reform since the 1980s. We’re unlikely to have reform any time soon.

Biden and the Democrats are vulnerable if they can’t articulate a plan (that they can back with numbers) that shows the American people what we’re doing to control immigration. Developing a clear position on immigration could draw significant public majority support.

There are plenty of Democrats and Independents who are strongly against migration. So Biden needs to show progress soon by demonstrating that we’re controlling the problem.

China’s Population Declines

The Daily Escape:

Dune Evening Primrose, Anza-Borrego Desert SP, CA – January 2023 photo by Paulette Donnellon

From the NYT:

“The world’s most populous country has reached a pivotal moment: China’s population has begun to shrink, after a steady, years long decline in its birthrate that experts say is irreversible.”

Irreversible. It was the first time that deaths had outnumbered births in China since Mao’s Great Leap Forward.

Feng Wang, Professor of Sociology, UC Irvine agrees: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“As a scholar of Chinese demographics, I know that the figures released by Chinese government on Jan. 17, 2023…. is the onset of what is likely to be a long-term decline. By the end of the century, the Chinese population is expected to shrink by 45%, according to the United Nations. And that is under the assumption that China maintains its current fertility rate of around 1.3 children per couple, which it may not.”

China has tried different policies for years in an effort to delay this moment, first, by loosening a one-child policy and then, by offering financial incentives to encourage families to have more children. Neither policy worked. Now, facing a population decline, coupled with a continuing rise in life expectancy, China’s demographics will have consequences not just for China but possibly for the rest of us.

China’s rise as an economic powerhouse is the result of its becoming the world’s factory floor. That created the world’s largest middle class. It moved hundreds of millions of rural Chinese to urban areas and fueled the spectacular growth of its largest cities. It made China the world’s second-largest economy, and also led to the increase in life expectancy.

Both Feng Wang and the NYT worry that China’s declining population will lead to a time when China will not have enough people of working age to fuel its growth. In the short run, there will be fewer workers to generate future growth in their economy. In the longer run, the costs to maintain an aging, post-work population will become very high (like in the US).

But economies don’t stand still for long. That China has a manufacturing-oriented economy isn’t a negative but a positive in this scenario. China has been moving up the manufacturing value chain for more than 20 years. So they are in a good position to use automation to address increasing labor scarcity and (presumed) rising labor costs.

They could also encourage work after normal retirement age, even if part time, with better wages and job environments. And like other countries facing similar issues, they could encourage immigration.

The US may be closer to China’s fate than we think. The US Census says that: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The U.S. population grew at a slower rate in 2021 than in any other year since the founding of the nation….[growing by] only 0.1%…”

It looks like we’re on a similar trajectory to China as are many other developed nations. Japan is currently dealing with it. South Korea and Taiwan are currently at a crossroads as both are facing a massive demographic crash. But, both are smaller and more economically developed than China, so they also have options. Much of Europe is looking at the same problem.

The solution would seem to be to allow immigration from the less developed world. But that comes with the likelihood that the newcomers will change our social and cultural norms. With immigration, our norms will change, and control of the politics in each country is likely to evolve as well.

The alternative to permanent economic growth is to allow the population shrinkage to happen. It’s kind of infuriating that big business and their captured politicians fail to recognize that a shrinking population (within reason) is both essential for our future and a good thing in the long run.

It can be scary: But transitioning from an economic model based on a constant input of young, working people to one where, we create fewer jobs, can work. If we make sure that those jobs are extremely productive.

What is the end game of an ever expanding population and perpetual economic growth for the human race? The world population when Wrongo was born was about 2.3 billion. It’s 3.5 times that today. Since resources are finite, it’s an inescapable conclusion that someday we must shrink the number of people. So why not today?

Sure, we can extend the economic life of certain resources by using new technologies. But if we continue to expand the number of humans on earth, we’ll see a global war for those resources, which will be a catastrophe.

Is a commitment to low population/low economic growth even possible at this late stage of capitalism?

Saturday Soother – December 17, 2022

The Daily Escape:

18^th Annual Las Vegas Santa Run – Saturday, Dec. 3, 2022. Source: L.E. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal @Left_Eye_Image

Lost in the back and forth of the year-end Congressional sausage-making was the unwelcome news that the deal to protect dreamers and to reform our immigrant asylum system has died.

From Greg Sargent in the WaPo:

“For a fleeting moment this month, a deal to protect 2 million “dreamers”…appeared within reach. Two senators with a history of bipartisan compromises were earnestly haggling over details…. The talks were endorsed by influential right-leaning opinion-makers, and even encouraged by the conservative Border Patrol union.”

The two Senators are Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ). Back to the WaPo:

“What happened? Tillis and Sinema were negotiating over bill text, much of which had been written, as late as Wednesday night. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) informed Sinema and Tillis that he wouldn’t allow it to be attached to the end-of-year spending omnibus bill, effectively killing it…”

Passing it was always a long shot. It looks as if the Republicans want immigration as a political issue more than they want a solution.

If you follow what’s going on at the southern border, you know that using Title 42, to allow police and border officers to expedite the expulsion of illegal immigrants is ending. A federal judge ordered the Biden administration to stop using it by Dec. 21, stating that it was “arbitrary and capricious.”

Immigrants are now crossing the border in large numbers, expecting that it will soon be impossible for US Border Patrol to simply send them back without reliance on Title 42. More from Sargent:

“The framework would have created new processing centers that would detain incoming asylum seekers — with increased legal and health services — until screenings could determine whether they have a “credible fear” of persecution if they were returned home. Those who passed would get a final hearing much faster than under the status quo, due to major investments in legal processing. Those who failed would be expelled promptly.”

The proposed Tillis/Sinema bill was designed to disincentivize exactly what the Republicans keep yelling about: Migrants who arrive seeking asylum, who then disappear into the interior and fail to show up for hearings. More from Sargent:

“What’s deeply frustrating about this moment is that the fundamental principles underlying reform were real and workable. Many Republicans recognize the absurdity of banishing the dreamers….And on asylum, these reforms represented a good-faith effort to come up with a solution that both sides could accept.”

The bill would have discouraged the exact sort of abuses that the Republicans constantly call the “border crisis” while retaining the US commitment to provide a fair hearing to all who seek refuge here.

Now, the border infrastructure that intercepts and processes migrants will be strained past the breaking point once Title 42 is lifted. But solving the problem doesn’t provide a political payoff to Republicans, who want to keep the “border crisis” hot as a 2024 campaign issue.

The Sinema/Tillis plan was a worthwhile effort. But there weren’t even 10 Republicans willing to break the filibuster. This is why, according to Gallup, more Americans say government is our biggest problem. And they’re saying so for the seventh time in the past 10 years. “Government” is a broad category of dissatisfaction that includes the President, Congress, Party politics and of course, gridlock.

There will be no end to gridlock unless and until bi-partisan efforts are rewarded. So, not in Wrongo’s lifetime.

But now’s the time to let go of the hot steaming mess that is our politics. Grab a few moments of calm and distance before we turn to a weekend of sourcing more Christmas presents and wearing our ugliest seasonal sweaters to family parties. It’s time for our Saturday Soother.

Here on the Fields of Wrong, we still have patchy snow on the ground, although the much-hyped winter storm that made it to the Northeast after wreaking havoc elsewhere seemingly has missed us entirely.

Let’s kick back and brew up a hot steaming mug of Ethiopia Uchoro Nansebo Washed ($27/12oz.) coffee from Floyd, VA’s (pop. 432), Red Rooster Coffee. The roaster says it is surprisingly savory and creamy with notes of apple cider, lemon-lime, and stewed peaches.

Now grab a comfy chair by a window and listen to Michael Bublé perform “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” with Hannah Waddingham (Rebecca Welton on Ted Lasso). Her singing is a revelation. It’s hard to believe she could make Bublé look and sound like a guy in the chorus. It’s from his 10^th Anniversary “Christmas in the City” show:

Democracy Fatigue

The Daily Escape:

Fall arrives in Ouray, CO – October 2022 photo by Gary Ratcliff

Why is authoritarianism growing at home and abroad? There is a relatively new notion called democracy fatigue: Political passivity and disgruntlement that stems from the exhaustion of seeing endless politicking, but never seeing change that makes lives better.

We’ve had a constant barrage of existential crises: Covid, climate change, Russian imperialism, immigration, inflation, and growing economic insecurity. With needing to act on all of these (and a few more), the ideals of political compromise and letting everyone have their say, seem sadly dated.

On the American Right, many joke that what would make things better is a ‘benign dictatorship.’ Because democracy doesn’t get things done. Politicians everywhere are taking the opportunity to go with “the big lie”. It’s become about lying until your ideas are accepted as fact. From Heather Cox Richardson:

“After World War II, political philosopher Hannah Arendt explained that lies are central to the rise of authoritarianism. In place of reality, authoritarians lie to create a “fictitious world through consistent lying.” Ordinary people embraced such lies because they believed everyone lied anyhow.”

And distrust of democracy is growing. From Hal Gershowitz:

“…in the US, Germany, and Japan, somewhere between 20% and 40%…would embrace “a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliaments and elections.”

Hal reminds us that last April In France, Emmanuel Macron managed to once again defeat right-winger Marine Le Pen, but by a much narrower margin than in their last face off in 2017. Elsewhere:

In traditionally liberal Sweden, a coalition of right-wing parties, anchored by the far-right Sweden Democrats, took control of Parliament.
Hungary’s uber authoritarian, Viktor Orbán secured his fourth consecutive term as Prime Minister.
And most recently, in Italy, a coalition led by far-right leader Giorgia Meloni won and will put together Italy’s first far-right government since World War II.

Beyond these are the far-right British National Party, and the Norwegian Progress Party. While these are fringe parties, they can exert influence on whatever party leads in parliamentary democracies.

Freedom House, founded in 1941 and primarily funded by the US, also paints a bleak picture. It publishes an annual assessment of “Freedom in the World” which notes that authoritarianism is having a great run. Freedom House says in 2020, the number of countries they listed as “no longer free” grew to the highest level in 15 years. Countries registering declines in political rights were also the highest in 15 years.

They note that a total of 60 countries suffered declines over the past year, while only 25 improved. As of today, some 38% of the global population live in Not Free countries, the highest proportion since 1997. Only about 20% of the world’s population now live in Free countries. The balance (41%) live in Partially Free countries.

The rise in authoritarianism may be due to the fact that in a sea of uncertainty, people are looking for a life raft. So they are willing to listen to and vote for those who articulate the importance of “traditional” values, and to assure them that the purported attack/assault on those values is a threat to them and their families.

The longing for benign dictatorship continues among America’s technology elites, whose denigration of politics flows from a Silicon Valley ideology that mixes libertarianism with authoritarian rule. They seem to want politics to work the way their products do: With elegant solutions implemented by smart, creative makers.

Their message is that surely, there’s a right way to get the job done: Fill the potholes, build the roads, keep our streets safe, get our kids to learn reading and math.

But whose potholes should get filled first? Should we keep our streets safe through community policing or long prison sentences? Should teachers be given merit pay, are small classrooms better, or should we lengthen the school day?

All of these issues can engender deep political fights. That’s because politics is disputes about values, not technical solutions. One person’s “right” is not another’s because people prioritize different values: Equity versus excellence, efficiency versus participation, security versus justice, short-term versus long-term goals.

Trump’s continuing control of the Republican Party is due to his ability to exploit grievance. His “America First” message continues to resonate with millions of voters who view the Democratic Party’s policies as an assault on America’s traditional values.

For the upcoming midterm elections we need to remember that constitutional democracy is not a gift from the gods.

It can be wrested away if we fail to uphold our democracy by voting this fall.

Saturday Soother – September 24, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Joshua Tree NP, CA – September 2022 photo by Bart Aldrich

This week, Wrongo and Ms. Right watched the Ken Burns program on the Holocaust on PBS. The three-part series is about how America responded to the Holocaust. An overriding theme in the film is that America’s aversion to immigrants framed much of our response to what Germany was inflicting on Jews throughout Europe.

You will not find a better or clearer narrative about the unfolding of the ideas and events that led ultimately to the Holocaust. Learning about America’s response in the run up to WWII is something we all should confront. It’s part of the ongoing conversation of what sort of country we believe the US to be, versus the kind of country it actually is.

From Tom Teicholz in Forbes:

“There are many revelations in the film. Burns, Novick and Botstein explore at length the connections between the American Eugenics movement, American genocidal policies towards Native Americans, and Jim Crow laws and Hitler’s policies and Nazi laws.”

Granted, the Germans didn’t need to learn racism or xenophobia from Americans. They did quite well on their own. They had already figured out how to export that to their African colonies. But, it’s true that here in America, we had the genocide of the Native Americans: Round them up, confine them, eliminate a major food source, and kill as many as you can. Genocide against Black people: Forced servitude, rape, and murder.

One thing that was beyond the scope of the film is why there was so much ambivalence by Americans to Hitler, and why we didn’t take in more European refugees. They show that until the late 19th century, America was a nation that welcomed immigrants. Then as the country grew and rates of immigration increased, by the turn of the 20th century, nativist sentiment was at an all-time high. Even Progressives, who prided themselves on helping the less fortunate, generally favored anti-immigration policies.

Ultimately, the US government’s anti-immigrant legislation normalized xenophobia in America. Nationalism and fear of immigrants has apparently been with us ever since. The film says that Hitler copied our tactics (!) and took them to a new extreme while the world watched.

On the last night (of 3), the film reminds us of the irony that Russia benefited from Roosevelt’s “Lend-Lease” arms program to help defeat the German invasion in WWII. A supreme irony now is that Russia’s complaining about our 2022 version of “Lend Lease” where the US is sending weapons to Ukraine to use against Russia.

We’re often inconsistent in our policies, but here we are in 2022 with a similar interest: The continued existence of an attacked sovereign nation. Only this time Russia is the aggressor, not Germany.

The last five minutes of the film provides a montage of the rising white supremacism and antisemitism in the US (including a clip of the marchers at Charlottesville in 2017) that, regrettably makes “The US and The Holocaust” all too relevant to today. It’s a very difficult history, but it’s also important that it is not forgotten.

Despite what’s going on in Ukraine and Russia, or with Trump’s many legal quagmires, let’s shut down the politics and posturing for this week. It’s time for our Saturday Soother.

Here on the fields of Wrong, the lawn has greened up from several decent rainstorms over the past few weeks. The bluebird houses are coming down for the winter. As we bid farewell to summer, leaves are beginning to turn color and fall. The summer classical music venues that we love have ended their seasonal programs. Wrongo wore a down vest this morning.

Time to grab a mug of Ethiopia Nano Genji Bergamot coffee ($25.50/12 oz.) from Sacramento, CA’s Temple Coffee. The roaster says it has flavors of tangerine and ginger with a long finish.

Now grab a seat by a south-facing window, put on your wireless headphones and listen to Van Morrison perform “When the Leaves come Falling Down” from his 1999 album “Back on Top”. We usually feature classical music on Saturdays, but this effort by Van the Man is very mellow and features wonderful fall photos:

The string section in the tune is by the Irish Film Orchestra.

Monday Wake Up Call – September 19, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Willard Beach, South Portland, ME – September 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photo

Last week, Wrongo wrote about how if you know a little about politics, your issues are guns, abortion, and taxes. We need to think about adding immigration to that list. Blog reader Craig G. asked, “when is enough, enough?” in response to Wrongo’s column on DeSantis sending immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard.

It’s a great question. We tend to think of immigration as an American/Mexican border problem, but it is much, much worse than that. The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees reported in May 2022, that the world, for the first time in history, had 100 million forcibly displaced people either in camps or on the move.

Of those who were on the move, “conflict and violence” accounted for 14.4 million, and “weather-related events” accounted for 23.7 million. The distinction between these numbers is often hard to understand. The civil war in Syria for example, produced large numbers of refugees. In 2021, more than 6.8 million refugees were from Syria, more than any other country in the world. At the same time, another 6.9 million people were displaced within Syria. The Syrian civil war followed the most profound drought ever recorded in what used to be the Fertile Crescent.

About 100 million migrants is huge, more than the population of Germany, Turkey or, Vietnam. But it could get worse as the impacts of climate change broaden throughout the 3rd world. The International Organization for Migration has predicted that we could see 1.5 billion people forced from their homes by 2050.

These numbers are staggering. Now couple them with America’s declining birth rate. Econofact reports that the US birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007. They say the decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. So, what if it continues while the number of people knocking on America’s doors continues to grow?

As Craig G. implies, there could come a time when all Americans will agree to limit immigration. Otherwise, a smaller, aging America will be asking what some on the Right are asking today: Who are the “real” Americans? What do we owe recent immigrants?

The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1 says:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

How will we adjust when the majority of our population are from different cultures, different races and speak different languages? The children of first-generation immigrants generally are well-adapted to the broad American culture; for the most part, they sound and act like Americans. If they were born here they ARE Americans. But the first generation migrant has an understandably difficult time.

This has caused the Right and specifically, the Christian nationalists on the right to be stingy about who they say is a true American, despite when many kids of immigrants are born here in America.The 14th Amendment doesn’t require any ideological, racial or language prerequisite.

Our low birth rates mean we can’t replace our population, so our economic growth will slow. If we replace our population with immigrants, we’ll have economic growth, but our culture will inexorably change.

Our history gives us some pointers. Immigration to the US peaked in the 19th century in the decade 1880-89 when it reached 5,248,568. The first decade of the 20th century saw another record with 8,202,388 people entering the country. In 1910, 75% of the population of New York, Chicago, Detroit and Boston consisted of first and second generation immigrants.

Remember that the US population was 62,979,766 in 1890, an increase of 25.5% percent since the prior census in 1880. Contrast that with today. Stastia says that 710,000 legal immigrants arrived here in 2021, and that we had 11.39 million illegal immigrants living in the US at year end 2018. We’re five times larger today.

Think about it: In 1890, our foreign-born population was 9.2 million. The total US population was 62.9 million. 5.2/62.9 = 14.6% of our population were immigrants. In 2018, out foreign-born population is 44.8 million. 44.8/320 million in US = 14.0%. Is our problem worse today?

Time to wake up America! A tsunami of immigrants will try to move from the 3rd world to the developed world. The numbers will be staggering, beyond anything experienced so far by Europe or the US. Our ability to cope with so many people in motion in some even modestly humane fashion will determine the character of our country over the next century.

To help you wake up, listen to John Moreland perform “Ugly Faces” from his 2022 album “Birds in the Ceiling”.

Sample Lyric:

You’re seeing ugly faces in your dreams
Let me know what it means
We told ourselves we’d tell it true
But I learned how to lie, watching you
This dirty place don’t want you here
Looks like you’re stuck another year
You close your eyes, a scene rolls by
A strip mall under sunburst sky
My back was to a corner, lonely in a crowd
I couldn’t hear you calling, the bullshit was so loud

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Immigration

The Mess That Is Congress

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 16, 2023

Immigration Reform Has To Happen

Saturday Soother – December 17, 2022